@ * .

j
British Fortification s
in Zu lu lan d 18 79
IAN KNIGHT is widely regarded
as a leading international expert
on the Anglo-Zulu War. He has
written, co-written or edited
over 30 books. He studied
Afro-Caribbean Studies at Kent
University, and is an Honorary
Research Associate of the Natal
Museum and Vice President of
the Anglo Zulu War Historical
Society. In 2000, he waS the
historian advising the Glasgow
University team who made the
first archaeological survey of the
Isandlwana battlefield. He lives
in Sussex, UK.
ADAM HOOK studied graphic
design and began his work
as an illustrator in 1983. He
specializes in detailed historical
reconstructions and has
Illustrated Osprey titles
on the Aztecs, the Greeks,
the American Civil War
and the American Revolution.
His work features in exhibitions
and publications throughout the
world. He lives in Sussex, UK.
Fa rtress 35
OSPREY
PUBLISHING
British Fortifications
in Zululand 1879
Ian Knight Illustrated by Adam Hook
Series editors Marcus Cowper and Nikolai Bogdanovic
First published in 2005 by o.sprey Publishing
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Artist's note
Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which
the colour plates in this book were prepared are available for
private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by
the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to:
Scorpio Gallery, PO Box 475, Hailsham, East Sussex, BN27 2SL,
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The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence
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Image credits
Unless otherwise indicated, the photographic images that appear
in this work are from the author's collection.
Measurements
Distances. ranges. and dimensions are given in Imperial measures.
To covert these figures to metric, the following conversion
formulas are provided:
I inch 2.54cm
I foot 0.3048m
I yard 0.9144m
I mile 1.609 km
I pound 0.4536 kg
I ounce 28.3495231 grams
The Fortress Study Group (FSG)
The object of the FSG is to advance the education of the public in
the study of all aspects of fortifications and their armaments.
especially works constructed to mount or resist artillery. The FSG
holds an annual conference in September over a long weekend
with visits and evening lectures, an annual tour abroad lasting
about eight days. and an annual Members' Day.
The FSG journal FORT is published annually, and its newsletter
Casemate is published three times a year. Membership is
international. For further details. please contact:
The Secretary, c/o 6 Lanark Place, London W9 IBS, UK
Contents
Introduction 4
The Anglo-Zulu War
Chronology 7
The role of fortifications during the Anglo-Zulu war 8
The British Army and military fortification in the 1870s Pre-war fortifications and civilian defences
Military fortifications in Zululand
The first invasion: the Coastal Column 16
Fort Pearson Fort Tenedos Eshowe mission station
The first invasion: the Centre Column 34
The defence of Rorke's Drift
The first invasion: the Northern Column 47
Camp Khambula The battle of Khambula
The second invasion; the war of fortification 52
The I st Division; forts Crealock. Chelmsford. Napoleon, Richards and Argyll
The 2nd Division and Flying Coiumn; forts Whitehead. Newdigate. Marshall, Evelyn and Nolela
The final battle 59
Pacification
Visiting the forts today 60
Select bibliography 63
Glossary 63
Index 64
Most defensive structures erected
by the Natal administration for the
protection of the white settler
community - generally known as
laagers - consisted of simple oblong
fortS made from dry stone with
one or more projecting bastions to
provide flanking fire, and sometimes
incorporating civilian buildings. This
contemporary illustration of the
laager in the village ofVerulam,
north of Durban, suggests that it
was a particularly impressive
4 structure two storeys high.
Introduction
The Anglo-Zulu war
On 11 January 1879, the Briti h Empire went to war with the Zulu kingdom of
southern Africa. The initiative for the war undoubtedly lay with the British,
although those who had manoeuvred a political confrontation and planned
the subsequent military intervention had expected the campaign to be short,
and the long-term regional benefits to far outweigh the costs. In fact, however,
Zulu resistance proved remarkably strong, and the war was to become Britain's
bloodiest entanglement in southern Africa up to that time. The long-term
consequences were, moreover, disastrous for both sides, resulting in abrupt
changes of British policy - which in turn sowed the seeds for future conflict -
and in the progreSSive destruction of the Zulu kingdom and to the
dispossession of the Zulu people.
The Zulu kingdom had emerged on the eastern seaboard of southern Africa
- between the Kahlamba (Drakensberg) mountains and the Indian Ocean -
early in the 19th century, on the very eve of uropean penetration of the area.
Britain had come to the ape in 1806, seizing the long-established Dutch port
at Cape Town to secure the maritime route around Africa to the Indies as part
of the global war on apoleon. Initially Britain had no interest in the
hinterland, but successive waves of settler emigration from the ape olony
dragged British authority in their wake and led to a serie of conflicts with
indigenous African groups. As early as 1824, rumours of the power and wealth
of the new Zulu kingdom had lured British adventurers to establish a trading
settlement - known optimistically as Port atal, modern Durban - on the Zulu
periphery. By the 1840s Britain had extended formal control inland from the
port. Known as atal, this area directly abutted the Zulu kingdom to the south.
or 30 years, Anglo-Zulu relations were amicable enough, but in the 1870s
the British adopted a more aggressive policy in southern Africa based on a new
Imperial economic vision stimulated by the discovery of diamonds at Kimberly
in 1868. In 1877 Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sent to the Cape to consolidate
Briti h claim across the area. QUickly, Frere came to see the Zulu kingdom - the
most militarily robust and economically independent black African group south
of the Limpopo River - as a threat to British interests. In late 1878 he
, ...-/
manipulated border tensions to engineer a rift
with the Zulu king, etshwayo kaMpande, and in
late 1878 presented an ultimatum. This demanded,
among other things, that the Zulu disband their
army and accept a British resident at the Zulu
capital. The Zulu made no reply, and war began.
As was often the case in Victorian colonial
wars, the commander in the field, Lt. en. Lord
helmsford, was faced with a task for which he
knew he had too few resources. In order to fulfil
Frere's political objective - to break up the Zulu
kingdom - helmsford was required to invade
Zululand with just 5,000 regular British infantry
and 20 field guns at his disposal. By his own
intelligence assessments, the Zulu could muster as many as 40,000
1
men who
were well-motivated, carried firearms as well as traditional weapons, and were,
moreover, unhindered by supply trains and were capable of moving through
the African landscape far more qUickly han their British counterpart. It
required the addition to Chelmsford's forces of small volunteer unit, raised
from the white settler population, and of several hastily raised regiments of
African auxiliaries, to make Chelmsford's army viable at all.
Lord helmsford's initial plan was to invade Zululand from five separate
points along the borders. Traditionally, the main entry point into the kingdom
was by a well-established traders' road that ran up the coast from Durban, and
crossed into Zululand at the Lower Thukela Drift, not far from the river's
mouth. A further network of tracks of varying degrees of reliability connected
the metropolitan centres of atal with the Transvaal Republic inland, and one,
which ran via Greytown north through the hamlet of Dundee, branched off at
Helpmekaar to strike the border at Rorke's Drift. A more established road,
known as the Jagter's Pad or 'hunters' road', skirted the Kahlamba foothills and
passed north through the area disputed by the Zulus and the Transvaal. All
three routes afforded opportunities to amass troops on the borders, although
the coastal road allowed the quickest access to the front to troops arriving by
sea. To plug the wide gaps between, Chelmsford intended to move a small force
south through the Transvaal, skirting the western border of waziland, and into
Zululand from the north, and to send another through the steep and
spectacular Thukela valley at Middle Drift, between Rorke's and the Lower
drifts. The columns were to converge on the cluster of royal settlements at
oNdini (Ulundi), which constituted the Zulu capital, but in the event a
shortage of transport forced Chelmsford to reduce the offensive columns to
three, with the Transvaal and Middle Drift columns given a supporting role.
The war went badly for the British from the first. All three invading columns
were met by a concerted Zulu response between 22 and 24 January. At yezane,
on the coast, Col. C.K. Pearson's right-flank column brushed aside local Zulu
forces and advanced to occupy his first strategic objective, the de erted mission
station at Eshowe. Similarly, in the north, Col. H.E. Wood's left-flank column
dispersed local Zulu concentrations around the Zungwlni and Hlobane
mountains. The heaviest Zulu response, however, was reserved for the centre
column, under Chelmsford's personal command. On 22)anuary the main Zulu
army, 25,000 strong, caught Chelmsford's column divided, and obliterated his
camp at Isandlwana, killing over 1,300 of the 1,700 defenders. In the aftermath
of that attack, some 3,500 Zulu reserves crossed the zinyathi (Buffalo) River
into atal and attacked the border post at Rorke's Drift, but were repulsed after
ten hours of close-quarter fighting.
I In lact, no single Zulu army in the field numbered more than 2S,OOO men In 1879 because the army was
deployed On several front.
\
I
"'-1
The difference in architecture
between colonial and military
fortifications is neatly summed
up in this sketch of the defences
at Greytown. close to the middle
Zululand border. The stone civilian
laager is visible close to the
buildings. with the adjoining military
earthwork in the foreground. Note
the wire entanglements outside the
trenches.
5
The interior of Fort Pine today -
the most impressive border post
along the Mzinyathi River, intended
as a barracks for the Natal Mounted
Police. The outlying walls and
interior barracks - shown here -
6 were all built from local stone.
The reverse at lsandlwana effectively destroyed helmsford's invasion plan.
The remnants of his centre column fell back on Rorke's Drift, leaving the
flanking columns unsupported. At Eshowe, Col. Pearson decided to dig in
around the mission buildings, and Zulu forces soon cut off his line of retreat.
nly the northern column remained active, raiding local Zulu settlements. For
three months, the atal/Zulu border was open to a Zulu counter-attack. Yet the
string of battles in January had exhausted the Zulu army, and the men had
disper ed to recover. King Cetshwayo had neither the will nor the ability to
carry the war into atal, and by his inertia in tho e crucial weeks he allowed
the Briti h to regain the initiative. Shocked by news of the disaster, the British
overnment hurried reinforcements to outhern Africa. By March Lord
helm ford was preparing to go onto the offensive, and the war entered a new
and decisive phase.
King etshwayo, well aware of the British build up, re-assembled his army
in the hope of striking first. Sent north, to attack Wood's column, it caught
Wood's mounted detachments isolated at Hlobane mountain on 28 March, and
routed them; the following day, however, the same regiment who had
triumphed at Isandlwana attacked Wood's column at Khambula, and were
decisively defeated.
At the sam time, helmsford had assembled a new column, composed of
reinforcements, and had crossed into southern Zululand to relieve Pearson at
howe. n 2 April he broke through the Zulu cordon at kwa ingindlovu, and
the following day Eshowe was relieved.
The twin defeats at either end of the country within days of each other had
s riously damaged the Zulu capacity to resis the Briti h invasion. Over the
following weeks, helmsford reorganised his forces again, and on 1 June
mounted a new offensive, striking into Zululand along two fronts. One column
- the 1st Division - advanced up the coast, suppressing local resistance, while
a new coiumn - the 2nd Division - advanced in tandem with Wood's old
column from the north. After a slow and careful advance, helmsford reach d
oNdini at the beginning of July, and on the 4th inflicted a final defeat on the
Zulu forces there. The great royal home teads were put to the torch, and King
Cetshwayo fled, only to be captured at the end of August by British Dragoons.
Minor skirmishes continued until news of the king's capture had spread
throughout Zululand, but by September, the Anglo-Zulu War was over.
Chronology
1878
II December
1879
6 January
II January
12 January
17 January
18 January
20 January
22 January
22/23 January
24 January
27 January
28 January
31 January
II February
3 March
II March
12 March
28 March
29 March
I April
2 April
3 April
II April
13 April
21 May
31 May
I June
16 June
17 June
20 June
27 June
28 June
I July
4 July
8July
15 July
28 August
Ultimatum delivered to Zulu representatives.
British No.4 Column crosses the River Ncome into Zululand.
The British ultimatum expires. No.3 Column crosses into Zululand at
Rorke's Drift.
No. I Column begins to cross into Zululand at Lower Thukela. No.3
Column attacks Sihayo's stronghold.
Main Zulu army leaves Ulundi to attack No.3 Column.
No. I Column begins advance on Eshowe.
No.4 Column establishes base at Fort Thinta. No.3 Column arrives at
Isandlwana.
The Battle of Nyezane; No. I Column defeats 6,000 Zulus in battle. The
Battle of Isandlwana; the British are soundly defeated.
The Battle of Rorke's Drift.
No.4 Column receives the first news of Isandlwana.
No. I Column receives news of Isandlwana.
No. I Column decides to hold Eshowe.
No.4 Column moves camp to Khambula Hill.
Chelmsford's despatch detailing the defeat at Isandlwana reaches
London. Communications with Eshowe are cut.
Heliograph communication is opened between Thukela and Eshowe.
The first reinforcements authorised by UK government.
Attack on the 80th Regimental convoy at Ntombe River.
Battle of Hlobane; mounted troops of No.4 Column are defeated.
The Eshowe Relief Column advances. The Battle of Khambula.
Prince Imperial of France arrives in Natal to join Lord Chelmsford's
staff.
The Battle of Gingindlovu.The Eshowe Relief Column defeats a large
Zulu army.
Eshowe is relieved.
The last of Chelmsford's reinforcements arrive.
Chelmsford reorganises his forces into I st Division, 2nd Division and
Flying Column.
A reconnaissance force moves to Isandlwana. Bodies are buried and
wagons are removed.
The 2nd Division crosses into Zululand.
Prince Imperial is killed in an ambush while on patrol.
Chelmsford receives news that he is to be superseded by Sir Garnet
Wolseley.
The Flying Column and 2nd Division link up for an advance on Ulundi.
I st Division advances from its depots in southern Zululand.
Combined 2nd Division and Flying Column arrive at Mthonjaneni
heights for a final march on Ulundi.
Sir Garnet Wolseley arrives in Durban.
2nd Division and Flying Column camp on the White Mfolozi River.
Battle of Ulundi; the final defeat for the Zulu army.
Chelmsford resigns his command.
Chelmsford hands over to Wolseley.
King Cetshwayo is captured. 7
8
The role of fortifications
during the Anglo-Zulu
war
Both Lord Chelmsford and his Zulu counterparts had originally conceived the
war as one of manoeuvre. The British had believed initially that the Zulu would
not be capable of concerted resistance, and Frere's political vision required
them to be quickly subjugated in order to facilitate the imposition of his
regional policies. The Zulu, conversely, could not sustain their armies in the
field for more than a few weeks at a time, and needed to conclude the fighting
so that the men could be released to their civilian responsibilities. At the out et,
therefore, the British paid little attention to the need for fortifications,
believing that they were unnecessary, too labour-intensive, and too time-
consuming. The one exception was in the area of civilian defence, where
fortifications were provided along the Zulu borders for the protection of the
white settler community, in case the Zulu mounted a counter-attack. atal's
black African population was largely expected to fend for itself in that event.
The events at Isandlwana changed this perspective. The complete absence of
any defensive works to protect the camp at Isandlwana was a conspicuous
element in the Briti h defeat, while the Zulu inability to overcome even the
hasty defences erected at Rorke's Drift made the advantages of uch works
obvious. At Eshowe, 01. Pearson's enforced isolation led to the construction of
a fort that was largely impregnable to Zulu attack. During the March battles,
both Khambula and to a lesser extent the camp at kwaGingindlovu were
protected by earthworks, and the Zulu proved unable to penetrate them.
During the advance on oNdini in the final stages of the war, it became as
commonplace to erect fortifications - small though they often were - to protect
the line of march and supply depots as it had been unusual at the beginning of
the war.
In the final analysis, although British fortifications in Zululand in 1879 were
often physically small and unglamorous, and their role historically has often
been overlooked, their contribution to the British war effort was immense. ot
only did they proVide a very real counter to the Zulu advantages in numbers
and mObility, but they offered a telling sense of psychological security which
ultimately shaped British tactics, and shifted the balance of power in the field
decisively in Lord Chelmsford's favour.
The British Army and military fortification
in the 1870s
During the second half of the 19th century, the art of fortification had made
huge progress among the world powers. ince the advent of gunpowder had
rendered medieval fortresses largely obsolete, the drive had been to develop a
system which would protect positions against increasingly sophisticated forms
of artillery bombardment. High ramparts of stone had given way to low angular
bastions, planned with scientific precision to minimise blast damage, and which
were protected from infantry attacks by complex screens of entrenchments and
ramparts. Such systems were perfected by the French military engineer,
Sebastien de Vauban (1633-1707) whose genius continued to dominate military
thought throughout the 19th century, and whose principles were adapted by
later generations to the requirements forced upon them by ever-more
ophisticated artillery ystems. And the 19th
century provided many telling examples of the
importance of the military engineer's art, from the
complex works outside Paris to the trenches and
bomb-proof shelters constructed to protect the
Turkish garrison at Plevna from the attacking
Russians. In America, the Civil War offered grim
lesson for the future as the early war of
manoeuvre gradually gave way to the protracted
sieges of the strategically important towns of
the south.
In the 1870s, the British Army was one of the
most experienced in the world. Indeed its record
was unique in the sheer quantity of campaigning
necessary to protect an expanding empire, and in
the variety of terrain in which it fought, and the
troop types it engaged. Yet, curiously, it is arguably
the case that the British Army lagged behind some
of the other powers in terms of the practical
application of military engineering techniques.
Between 1839 and 1900, Britain fought only on
major European-style war - that against Russia in
the Crimea. Siegecraft had played a major role in
that war, as the Russian had dug in around the
port of Sebastopol, forcing Britain and her allies to
invest it. The allies had, however, ingularly failed
to penetrate the Russian works, and indeed the
major battles of the war had been decided in the
open, for the most part away from the Russian
lines. There had been fighting around defensive works in India during the
Mutiny, too, but the scope to employ siege technique had remained limited.
In New Zealand, in ucce sive wars against the Maoris in the 1840 and 1860s,
the British had been reqUired to develop responses to Maori fortification
systems, but the contest had been small compared to the greater conflicts
waged by armies in Europe. In the major campaigns at the end of the 19th
century - in the udan and in ou h Africa - the role of field engineering had
been important but minor. In all this wealth of campaign experience, there was
nothing among the Briti h by 1879 to compare with the titanic struggles for
Plevna or Petersburg.
The Royal Engineers
Responsibility for building and destroying fortifications in the British Army -
together with surveying, road building, demolition, ballooning, military
railways and even photography - fell to the Corps of Royal Engineer. By the
1870s, the importance of a level of professional competence, of theoretical and
technical expertise, was first becoming appreciated within the British Army,
which had hitherto relied upon a belief in the inherited ability to command,
and upon amateur enthusia m. The officer of the Royal Engineers were among
the most professional and highly trained in the Army, being graduates of the
Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. This institution trained officers for the
technical services - the Engineers and Artillery - and demanded a high
standard of profiCiency in mathematics, gunnery, engineering, fortification and
bridging, as well as the essential art of landscape sketching and some
understanding of geology and mineralogy. Their duties were not, however,
confined to a supporting role, and Engineer officers often found themselves
commanding troops in action throughout the Victorian period. Indeed, many
distinguished Victorian commanders were Engineers, from Lord apier of
Captain Warren Richard Colvin
Wynne, NO.2 Company. Royal
Engineers. who. as senior Engineer
attached to Col. Pearson's coastal
column. was responsible for the
design of Fort Tenedos and the
fort at Eshowe - the largest work
constrUCted during the war.
9
The fort at Thing's Post, one of
a number of forts built along the
exposed Natal/Zulu borders. The
fort itself consisted of an earthwork
(visible on the skyline); it was
garrisoned by members of the
Border Guard. and African auxiliary
unit shown here lined up in
companies and screened by
skirmishers. Note the men's
huts outside the fort to the left.
The author at Wolf Trap Fort.
a smali rectangular stone redoubt
with a projecting bastion at the
corner. It was built on high ground
overiooking the Thukela River
upstream from Middle Drift by the
IXopo Native Contingent, probably
10 in May 1879.
Magdala to Kitchener of Khartoum. One of Lord
helmsford's appointed column ommanders in
Zululand, Bvt. CoL Anthony Durnford - who
would die at Isandlwana - was an Engineer. So too
wa Lt. Chard, the senior officer at Rorke's Drift.
The standard field unit for the Royal Engineers
in the 1870s was the ompany, which at full
strength consisted of six officers (a Major,
Captain, three Lieutenants and a urgeon), 21
NCOs (Sergeants, Corporals and 2nd Corporals)
and 173 Other Ranks (Drivers, Sappers, Buglers
and Batmen). The Sappers were trained in
specialist duties, including masonry, carpentry,
bricklaying, and as wheelwrights, miners and
smiths. An ideal company was expected to be able
to provide the complete range of technical skills
necessary to support the active elements of a force
in the field.
Inevitably, however, Lord Chelmsford was forced to undertake the inva ion
of Zululand with too few Engineers at his disposal. Indeed, two companies
despatched from England in late 1878 - o. 2 Company under Captain Warren
Wynne and No. 5 Company under Captain Walter Jones - as a result of
helmsford's last-minute request for reinfor ements constituted, apart from a
handful of officers already in southern Africa, his only regular Engineer
complement. Both ompanies arrived at Durban on the transport Walmer Castle
on 4january 1879, just a week before the war began. Both were under-strength,
and while Wynne' company was attached to Pearson's Coastal Column, and
arrived at the Zulu border on 12 january - the day after the BritiSh ultimatum
expired - only a mall advance party from jone ' company had reached the
Centre Column at Rorke's Drift by the 17th.
In an attempt to make good something of this critical deficiency,
Chelmsford had requested the formation of a unit of atal ative Pioneers
from among the African auxiliary units being raised by the atal colonial
authorities. In all three companies were raised under European commanders,
their strength varying between 80 and 104 men. The African chiefdoms of
Natal had been periodically reqUired to provide a labour force for the
NATAL
II
20 miles
25km
N
INDIAN
OCEAN
o
I
Williamson
o Abandoned pre-existing CoIooial fortifications
Military forts
eMlian and/or colonial 'Iaagers' and fortin,," posts
..... British movements
Civilian 'Iaagers' and military forts to January 24, 1879
Greylown laager
(and adjoining military
Fort Moore)
Greytown: Honnansburg
laager
Helpmekaar
T
Landman's Drift
Dundee.
Pietermari12burg .. Pie"
(Including Britl
Fort PIne.
Pleter's laager

Toll laager
_.-'-'-
,
" .
'" Wakkerslroom
The interior of the civilian laager in
Greytown, showing troops watching
for Zulu raids and manning the
loopholes. In fact, when occupied
during alarms the laager was
crammed full of civilians. including
I 2 women and children.
Government's road-building programme, and the selection of men for the
Pioneers reflected previous experience in that work. The Pioneers were one of
the few auxiliary units to receive uniforms - they were given outmoded British
uniform jackets and white trousers - and while the COs were issued with
firearms, the men in the ranks were given shovels and pickaxes.
Pre-war fortifications and civilian defences
Colonial society on the eve of the war was characterised by a small ruling
settler elite, which was greatly outnumbered by a large African population,
most of which still lived a traditional lifestyle, and many of whom had
historical connection - often antagonistic - with the Zulu kingdom. Although
there had been occasional tension between atal and Zululand over the years,
with resulting fears of Zulu attack, very few provisions had been implemented
for the defence of the civilian population, either by mean of border defence,
or to provide shelter in times of attack.
In 1861, following one invasion scare, a number of forts had been built
along the border, notably Fort Buckingham, on the high e carpment near the
Middle Drift on the Thukela River, and Fort Williamson, which commanded
the best-established route into Zululand at the Lower Thukela Drift. Both forts
were relatively simple earthworks, with an inner rampart - probably originally
topped with a dry-stone wall - surrounded by a ditch. Neither work was found
to be viable on the eve of the Anglo-Zulu War; Fort Buckingham had been
abandoned in 1868, and was in ruins a decade later. Fort Williamson was
thought still to be useful, but when the first detachments of British troops
arrived at the Lower Thukela in ovember 1878, they preferred to build a new
fort nearby, on the bluffs overlooking the river.
ivilian Iaagers
Fear of attack, either by the Zulu kingdom or from a rising from among atal's
African population, was, however, a feature of the settler psyche, many of whom
lived lonely and vulnerable lives on isolated farms, and were all too conscious
that they were heavily outnumbered. To protect against such an eventuality, the
atal colonial government had made provision for a number of defensive posts
to be built to serve as a refuge for outlying communities. The government
generally agreed to pay half the cost of these posts, while the settlers themselves
proVided the remainder, although in some cases - particularly during the tense
months leading up to the war - local farmers considered the e arrangements
inadequate, and made their own provision for defence.
These posts were universally known as 'laagers' from the Afrikaans word,
which strictly speaking referred to a defensive circle of wagons, but which had
achieved a wider currency representing any place of safety in the face of an
African attack. Traditional laagers were formed by encircling the wagons and
drawing the tran port oxen in ide; they could be hastily formed by wagon-
trains of settlers on trek, or by farmers in anticipation of an attack, to serve as a
rallying point and place of refuge. Sometimes, permanent structures were used
as anchoring points for a true laager, and as families trekked in from their farms
they would park their wagons in a defensive line around designated buildings.
More often, however, the government post were simple forts, and contained
sufficient room for the anticipat d number of occupants to draw their wagons
inside. The wagons then served as accommodation for the occupants.
The e civilian laager were u ually built on a common pattern - an oblong
walled enclosure, with square bastions at either end to prOVide flanking fire
along the outside of the walls. The walls themselves were usually made of dry
stone, and loopholes were built to allow the defenders to fire through.
By far the most impressive civilian laager was at Estcourt, in the atal
midlands. This had been started in 1874 by the then Major Durnford RE, in
response to the 'rebellion' of the amaHlubi people in the nearby Kahlamba
foothills. Durnford had built a two-storey stone blockhouse with bastions at
either corner. A basement was designed to act as a reservoir, containing water
drained from the roof. Windows on each side were protected by iron shutters,
which contained loopholes. The main entrance was screened by blinds on the
inside to proVide cover for the defenders should the doorway be stormed, while
a retractable wooden stairca e allowed the defenders to isolate themselves on the
upper floor. In 1876, three guardhouses and stables had been built close by as a
barracks for the atal Mounted Police, and in 1878 these had been linked to
Durnford's blockhou e with a dry stone wall to provide a large rectangular laager.
In the event, 'Fort Durnford' was too far from the scene of hostilities in 1879 to
be attacked, and indeed its defences were so impressive as to deter any attacker.
On the atal/Zulu border, only Fort Pine - built on the Biggarsberg ridge
above the Mzinyathi River, to serve as a refuge for the frontier farmer between
the hamlet of Helpmekaar and the town of Dundee - approached Fort
Durnford's ambitions. It followed the same basic design, but wa only one
storey high, with loopholes instead of windows. Work had begun in 1878, and
it was intended to include internal accommodation, but only the outside walls
had been completed when war broke out in January 1879. A number of local
settlers had occupied the post before the disaster at Isandlwana on the 22nd,
which then produced a flood of refugees. Although the interior was crammed
with families and their wagons and tents, there were insufficient men to
provide an effective defence, and under a very real danger of attack, two small
Volunteer units - the Buffalo Border Guard and ewcastle Mounted Rifles -
were stationed at the post from 7 February. By May, however, the danger of
attack had subsided and most of the settlers had returned home, although the
Volunteers remained in residence until July, and the effective end of the war.
Smaller civilian laagers were constructed in or close to the Villages along the
length of the border throughout the la t months of 1878, their precise size and
shape dictated by the location and by the number of families they were
expected to protect. Indeed, when panic swept through atal in the aftermath
of Isandlwana, even the centres at Durban and Pietermaritzburg were hastily
fortified. Key buildings were identified, barricaded and loop-holed, and linked
to outlying structures with barricades or wagons. At Durban, a stockade was
built across the tip of the Point, one of two jaws of land which frame Durban
Bay, to proVide a last-ditch refuge for women and children in the event that the
town was overrun. 13
Part of the military camp outside
the fortifications at Greytown. The
picture is probably taken from
between the trench and the wire
entanglements; note the cleared
glacis. the stakes between which the
wire was stretched and the rather
half-hearted attempt to litter the
approaches with broken glass -
several intact bottles are visible
on the left.
Of course, no large-scale Zulu attack materialised, and indeed none of the
civilian laagers, even those situated clo e to the borders in areas subsequently
ravaged by localised Zulu raids, were destined to be attacked. Their defences
were never therefore tested, but their contribution to the war hould not be
overlooked. For a while, in the aftermath of the military failures of late January,
they represented Natal's first line of defence, and the fact that they remained
unviolated provided the psychologi al foundation for the British recovery.
Military fortifications in Zululand
In his tanding Orders, published on the eve of war, Lord helmsford specified
that all permanent camps con tructed in Zulu territory should be at least
partially entrenched for their own protection. In the light of sub equent
events, thi instruction came under considerable scrutiny, but there can be
little doubt that in January 1879 helmsford saw only a very limited role for
fortifications. In this, his attitude was shaped by his experiences on the Eastern
ape Frontier the previous year. Here, he had been faced with suppreSSing a
sporadic outbreak among the amaXhosa people, who preferred to avoid open
confrontation, and who waged a guerrilla war from mountain and bush
strongholds. Lord Chelmsford had broken Xhosa resistance by establishing
protected camps in enemy territory, to act as supply depots and operational
bases, and sweeping out from these to contain and destroy the Xhosa armies.
Initially, he undoubtedly expected a similar pattern of warfare in Zululand,
and since he hoped for a SWift and decisive confrontation, he did not want to
be hampered unduly by the need to protect every halt on the march with forts.
He anticipated a war of manoeuvre; famously, he once commented that his
plan was to 'drive the Zulu into a corner, and make them fight'.
14
Both helmsford and hi officers were, mor ov r, sceptical tha a Zulu army
had the capability to mount a determined attack on a British po ition. The
Martini-Henry rifle, with which the Briti h infantry were armed, was a robu t
and accurate breech-loader, and had proved devastating on those rare
occasion when the Xhosa had attacked in the open. In order to overrun a
position held by even a small number of disciplined and experienced troops -
as most of helmsford' battalion were in January 1879 - the Zulu would need
to mount attacks that were tactically adroit, and would need to withstand the
high level of casual tie nece ary to bring their men to contact. Despite advice
to the contrary, helmsford believed that they were not capable of either.
helmsford's regulations did not, moreover, specify the nature of any
entrenchments that were to be constructed. Since the Zulu did not possess
artillery, and their firearms were of limited effectiveness, it was not necessary to
design the sort of complex structures that were essential in Europe and America.
Indeed, the forts merely had to protect the defenders while at the same time
providing a physical barrier to slow the Zulu attack long enough to subject it to
sufficient small-arms fire. In practice, this usually meant building a square or
rectangular work by digging a surrounding ditch and piling the earth up inside
to form a rampart. The defenders then lined the rampart, which both protected
them from musketry and served to break the impetus of the Zulu charge. In
areas where the ground was hard and stony, making digging difficult - which
included much of the inland regions of Zululand - it was often sufficient to
construct a stout stone wall. Indeed, as Rorke's Drift would prove, the barricades
could, in an emergency, be even more basic, for the fact remained that the Zulu
were dependent for victory on fighting at close quarters. Any rudimentary
barricade which kept them beyond arms' reach allowed the defenders the
chance of shooting them down with relative impunity.
Throughout the fluctuations in the fighting, the realisation of this simple
fact came to dominate British thinking in the field and to shape a grOWing
reliance on fortifications. Although the breezy over-confidence which prevailed
before lsandlwana soon gave way to a more fraught atmosphere which lasted
throughout the campaign, the tactical principles that underpinned British
fortifications in Zululand remained unchanged, and, with the exception of the
fort at Eshowe, the works themselves were never complex by European
standards. Even so, the Zulu came to realise early in the war that they had no
counter to even the most simplistic British 'strongholds'.
Fort Jones, built in May 1879 on the
outskirts of the town of Dundee to
serve as a supply depot for the 2nd
Division. The corrugated iron sheds
had previously stood at Helpmekaar,
and were moved to Dundee when
the focus of the war shifted. No
trace of Fort Jones now remains:
this photograph suggests it was
an earthwork with sad walls.
15
BOTTOM LEFT Fort Pearson, built
in December 1878 on a knoll
overlooking the Lower Thukela
Drift into Zululand - which lies
on the left of the photo,
BOTTOM RIGHT The same view of
Fort Pearson in the 1990s suggests
the commanding geographical
features of the position. The
trenches are still clearly visible; a
motorway bridge was then under
construction, spanning the Thukela
where a pont had once ferried
Pearson's column across the
Thukela.
The first invasion: the
Coastal Column
The Lower Thukela road - known variously as the Hunters' Road or John
Dunn's Road after King Cetshwayo's white adviser whose territory lay on the
Zulu bank - consisted of no more than an overgrown wagon track, but it had
been the route by which armies and refugees had crossed into and out of the
kingdom for a generation. It crossed the river near its mouth, where the narrow
gorges up-country had given way to a broad sluggish expanse of water, fordable
in all but times of flood, and which passed through one of the few areas of
Zululand where the Zulu kings had allowed white missionaries to establish
stations. As a result, a number of European buildings - abandoned by their
incumbents on the eve of war - lay close to the road.
All these considerations made the route an obvious choice for one of
Chelmsford's invading columns, and towards the end of 1878, before even
Frere's ultimatum had been presented, the first advance detachments arrived to
establish a camp on the atal bank of the river.
Fort Pearson
By November several companies of the 3rd Regiment - 'The Buffs' - were in
residence. Because of the poor state of the old Fort Williamson a mile
downstream, the Buffs decided to occupy a high bluff on the ridges that
directly overlooked the drift. With a olitary Engineer officer to advise them -
Lt. T. R. Main - they built an earthwork which they called Fort Pearson, after
their commanding officer.
Construction of the fort had been completed by December. The Lower Drift
was Frere's appointed spot for the fateful meeting with the Zulu representatives
on 11 December, when the British ultimatum was presented. The presence of
Fort Pearson, and of troops lined up in a show of Imperial might nearby, was
intended as a SUitably earnest warning to King Cetshwayo that the British
meant business.
Fort Pearson was to remain the anchor for all British operations in the
coastal sector, during both the first and second invasions. The fort itself was
particularly simple in design, even by the tandards of BritiSh works in
Zululand. Scarcely SO yards long and 30 wide, it followed the contours of a
knoll in the manner of a eltic hill fort. The perimeter consi ted of two
concentric circles of trenches, the earth from the outer trench being piled up
on the outside to provide a raised glacis. The earth from the inner trench was
16
piled up along the line between the two trenches to create a rampart that
overlooked both the outer trench and the glacis. line of gabions - wicker
containers packed with earth - were placed along the top of the rampart to
provide a formidable obstacle. The entrance was on the southern ( atal) side,
and was approached by a path up the steep slope. The entrance itself was
screened by a dog-leg of gabions. On the northern side - towards Zululand -
the ground fell away for a few yards, then dropped into the river along a sheer
cliff face. In the centre of the fort, on the highest point of the knoll, there was
a small oblong redoubt, no more than ten yards long, surrounded by a single
ditch with a rampart inside. Early in the war, a aval detachment from HMS
Active placed a Gatling gun and a 7-pdr field gun in this redoubt, so a to
command the river crossing below. Contemporary maps show the inner
redoubt topped with gabions, although these do not feature in a photograph
taken in January, and they were probably a later addition.
Over the following month , a number of small redoubts were added along
the ridge a few hundred yards west of Fort Pearson, to protect the sprawling
concentrations of troops and transport which passed through the area as the
war progressed. These were more regular in shape than Fort Pearson, and
consisted of square or oblong earthworks, again comprising an outer trench
with the earth piled up inside to form ramparts.
On 12 January Captain Wynne's o. 2 Company RE arrived at the Drift,
fresh out from England. Pearson's column was now in the position - unique
among the invading columns - of haVing a complement trained and skilled in
Sailors from HMS Tenedos man a
Gatling gun (left). 7-pdr gun (right)
and rocket trough (centre distance)
in the small redoubt on the very
top of Fort Pearson in January
1879.
A contemporary plan of Fort
Pearson, showing the way in which
the trenches followed the contours
around the summit of the knoll.
These were reinforced with gabions.
Sutton A.8.
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17
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the art of fortification, and in o. 2 Company's commander it had a
conscientious and capable officer. Warren Richard Colvin Wynne was 35 years
old, a rather serious, religious family man whose background, like many
Victorian officers, lay in the Anglo-Irish 'ascendancy', and who had been
gazetted into the Engineers in 1862. Whilst Wynne was destined not to achieve
the fame accorded hi fellow Engineer Lt. Chard - or, for that matter, the
controv r yof 01. Durnford - he was undoubtedly responsible for the greatest
engineering feats of the war, since he was responsible for two of the largest and
most important forts built during the campaign.
Fort Tenedos
Pearson's column had crossed into Zululand unoppo ed on 11 January by
means of a pont - a flat-bottomed ferry - anchored on either side of the river
below Fort Pearson, and had established a large, sprawling camp on the Zulu
bank. The Engineers crossed on the 13th, and Pearson instructed Wynne to
select a ite for a large earthwork, which was to protect the stores that would
be accumulated for the coming advance. Wynne spent the folloWing day
making his selection - a piece of open ground loping gently down towards the
river, and straddling the track - and on the 15th work began. The subsequent
work would be christened Fort Tenedo , after one of the aval ships that had
contributed a landing party to Pear on' command.
Wynne made meticulous notes on th con truction of ort Tenedos, which
offer a revealing insight into how such work wa completed. For the most part,
Wynne and his officers supervi ed the work, with the appers carrying out
skilled tasks, and infantrymen prOViding the labour force. First, the ground was
cleared of any bush while the Sappers cut sticks to serve as markers for the shape
of the fort, or 'profile'. The sti ks were then hammered into the ground up to
the height of the ramparts, to guide those building the parapets. The work was
carried out in three-hour hifts known as 'reliefs', each relief employing upwards
of 100 infantry, who were rotated throughout the day. The reliefs were divided
into parties who tarted work on each face of the fort, 0 that the outline grew
rapidly toward h angle where each wall joined. The labourers were divided
into 'diggers', who cut out the outlying trench, and 'shovellers' who piled the
TOP LEFT Forr Tenedos, on the Zulu
bank, photographed c.June 1879.
The outline of Wynne's forr
is clearly visible, as are the
surrounding lines of wire
entanglementS and trous-de-Ioups.
The high bluff - also covered in
British camps - is across the river,
on the Natal side.
ABOVE RIGHT The remains of Fort
Tenedos today. viewed from the
summit of Fort Pearson. Like many
of the fortS in the coastal sector,
it ha.s suffered from intensive
sugar-cane farming.
Forts Tenedos and Pearson on the River Thukela
Forts Tenedos and Pearson lay on either side of the River
Thukela. and this scene shows them as they appeared in
January 1879. Fort Tenedos (I) is in the foreground, with
tents for living quarters for the naval troops manning it.
Its earth ramparts (2) are given further protection by a
surrounding barrier of'trous-de-Ioups' ('wolf pits'). holes
about 3ft square and 3ft deep with sharpened stakes at
the bottom (3). The wire entanglements above these
pits were made by driving posts into the ground in
consecutive rows, and twisting plain wire between them
in a zig-zag pattern. On the other bank of the river lies
Fort Pearson (4), of a simpler design. with a redoubt in its
middle. The steep slopes of the surrounding terrain were
well suited to the creation of earth parapets and ditches
around the fort. 19
20
A map of the forts Pearson and
Tenedos complex during the second
invasion, when the area served
as a base for the Ist Division. The
original pont across the river had by
then been augmented by a pontoon
and footbridge.
TUCELA RIVER
CAM"'S ... "CJo WOR':S IH I'': OI .... I$IOH
::
c. IU.


F. A,S.c...

H.

K.p.,.,.,
-
...
H.8upiLsZ

P. oo'!It:iIlM

. -l..-..r",,,, /7 /. n
earth up behind to form the rampart. It was necessary to supervise the profiles
carefully, because a rampart that was too steep would simply collap e, while one
that was too shallow would provide no obstacle.
Fort Tenedos was typical in many ways of a design that would become
common in Zululand throughout the war. It was broadly hexagonal in shape
but the walls were of different lengths, giving the impression that the
symmetry was rather 'squashed up'. A small bastion jutted out of the eastern
angle, so that it actually had eight walls in all. Overall the position measured
roughly 250ft across by 110ft. Each ditch was supposed to be 6ft deep, but in
fact layers of rock meant that on some of the faces it only reached to 4ft. The
ramparts were shoulder-high, with a banquette - a raised firing step - inside to
allow the garrison to fire over them. Where time permitted, the ramparts were
to be 'revetted' - supported by lines of stakes or sandbanks to prevent them
crumbling. Two raised and revetted gun-platforms were built in the angles
facing north-east - towards Zululand. The entrance was on the south-western
face, and screened by a dog-leg rampart inside, so that the defenders were
protected if they needed to fire at any Zulu forcing the doorway.
By 17 January Pearson had managed to move his baggage train across the
river, and the advance into Zululand was scheduled to begin on the 18th.
Wynne's company was to march with the column, and despite his best
endeavours Fort Tenedos was not quite complete, and some of the revetting
had to be left to the garrison designated to remain there, or abandoned
altogether. The fort was, however, considered to be in a state ready to receive
an attack; it had taken just three days to build but had employed the labour of
upwards of 3,000 infantry working in shifts.
The advance began as ordered, and a small garrison was left to hold the fort
and protect the supplies that were constantly being carried across the river. Fort
Tenedos enjoys the di tinction of being the only true fort built in Zululand in
the opening week of the war
2
, and under conditions of very real threat. The
movements of the Zulu army were not at this point known, and there was a
distinct possibility that the fort might be attacked at any time. Indeed, on the
night of 2S January, the fort's commander, Lt. Kingscote RN, reported that the
fort had come under a heavy fire from Zulus concealed in the darkness. There
were no casualties and the shooting cea ed after an hour, the Zulus making no
attempt to attack.
Fort Tenedos, like Fort Pearson on the atal bank, remained the anchor for
British movements from the Lower Thukela throughout the war, and, again like
For Pearson, it was subject to continued refinement after Wynne had left. A
plan of the fort completed later in the war shows two interior partitions, one
consisting of a ditch backed by a row of gabions, and the other a dit h backed
with sandbags. These were intended to prevent any enemy fire that passed over
the outer walls from raking the interior, or striking the backs of the men
defending the ramparts on the far side. Also, a line of obstacles was placed to
completely surround the fort at a distance of between 10 and 200 metres. These
were intended to disrupt and delay any attack as it approached the rampart,
and hold the attackers at the points where they would suffer most heavily from
the defenders' fire. The obstacle themselve consi ted of trous-de-Ioup ('wolf
pits') which were made by simply digging rows of holes up to 6ft square and
deep, and placing sharpened stakes in the bottom, and wire entanglements.
These entanglements were not made of barbed wire, as they might have been a
generation later, but were constructed by driving lines of wooden stakes in the
ground, and stringing wire Zig-zag between hem. They were intended to trip
the enemy. Although both technique were e entially medieval in concept,
they proVided a formidable obstacle against an enemy who went barefoot.
Impressive though it was, Fort Tenedos did not meet everyone's approval,
and in February one of Chelmsford's staff officers commented:
It was very lucky the Zulus did not attack this place ... It is completely
open to the fire of a long, strong, stony hill only 300 yards off! And no one
seemed to know that danger until we arrived!
Yet Wynne had been constrained in his choice of ground by Pearson's need
to establish a supply depot clo e to the river, and, rather than selecting the best
ground himself, had had to make the best of what was available. Many times
in Zululand Engineer officers would face the same predicament; and indeed
Wynne himself would soon be required to build a more demanding work under
even less favourable circum tances.
Once the advance began, o. 2 Company was fully committed to the rather
more prosaic work of cutting drifts through the dozens of streams and small
rivers that bisected the line of advance. 22 January offered more excitement,
when, as his column crossed the yezane River, Pearson was attacked by a force
of 6,000 Zulus who had occupied the heights beyond. When the Zulu
attempted to cut off the crossing, Wynne's ngineers were forced to fight as
infantry. The Zulus were driven off, however, and Pearson resumed his advance;
the following day he occupied his first objective, the mission station at Eshowe.
Eshowe mission station
Eshowe had been chosen as an objective simply because of its location on a
map, and because it comprised several permanent European bUildings. These
were in short supply in Zululand, and Chelmsford intended that they be pressed
into service as shelters for a supply depot. As a mission, however, the site had
2 A number of small stone sangers were built to protect Col. Wood's camp at Fort TI,inta at this time. 21
22
Eshowe Mission Station
I Store buildings
2 Church/hospital
3 Hut
4 Magazine
5 Bell
6 Water reservoir
7 7.pdr gun positions
8 Gatling gun
9 Double-tiered timber
and sandbag stockade
9A Internal view of double-
tiered stockade
98 External view of double-
tiered stockade
10 Drawbridge
lOA Cross-section through
the drawbridge showing
the elevating mechanism
II Drain
12 Trous-de-Ioup and wire
entanglements
13 Caponier (covered way)
13A Side profile of caponier
14 Palisades in ditch
15 Internal wagon barricade
16 Cattle laager with
infantry escort
16A Cattle-slaughtering
I ~ ~ & e r . ..
I 7 Former site p! wagon '.
laager 'r,
18 Cemetery
23
An overview of the fon at Eshowe.
sketched at the end of the war, after
it had been abandoned. The church
is on the right - note the main
entrance, left. and the trees that
were left standing within the
perimeter.
not been chosen with defence in mind, and when Pearson arrived he found the
location to be unsuitable in many respects from a military point of view.
The mission station had been built on a ridge of high ground, which fell
away to both north and south. The buildings consisted of a church, built of
locally manufactured mud bricks, plastered with mud, and with a corrugated
iron roof. There were three other sizable buildings; the missionaries' house,
compl te with veranda, a chool building and a large shed which erved a a
workshop, and storeroom. These were constructed of the same materials as the
church, but had thatch roofs. Beyond the house, on ground sloping down to a
small stream, there was a fine orchard of fruit trees, and across the stream were
several additional small buildings.
On their arrival, Pearson's men camped along the ridge on either ide of the
mission. Pearson expected to receive further instruction to continue the
advance, and at that point the mission was intended to be no more than a supply
depot. Wynne was instructed to trace out a work around the bUildings that
might be defended by a garrison of 400 men. He began clearing the bush away
from the buildings to secure the field of fire, and regretfully found it necessary to
cut down the fruit trees, which provided cover to within a few yards of the
house. Once again, Wynne traced out the profiles while his Sappers marked them
out, and men of the infantry and auxiliaries provided the labour. Captain Hart,
who was staff officer to one of the auxiliary units - th 2nd C - left an
interesting de cripUon of how he employed his untrained men in such work:
y plan of entrenching ground with them was far Simpler than the
military regulation one of marking out lines of the trench with white tape.
[ di pensed with the tape, and made the natives all hold hands, and stretch
out thus in a string at arm' length. Then I walked along the string of men,
and put them exactly on the ground wh re the entrenchment wa to be
dug. ext I had a pickaxe and a shovel put by other men at the feet of each
man in the string, and then, but not till then, I let the men leave go hands,
whereupon they would commence to dig where they stood, each
excavating a bit of trench from where he stood, to his neighbour on his
right. I had those entrenched the most expo ed parts of the position at
[Eshowe] while the Engineers, with the regular soldiers, were making a
ubstantial fort within.
On 2S January unsettling rumours began to circulate among the garrison
that some of the olonial troops on vedette duty - who spoke Zulu - had heard
shouts being passed across distant hilltops that the Zulu had won a great
vi tory. This was confirmed the following day when a runner arrived with a
sketchy report of a defeat on 22 January. The full significance of the disaster
24
was not revealed until the 28th, when a note from helmsford indicated that
the entre olumn had suffered a severe los, and baldly informed Pearson
that he might now have to face the full weight of the Zulu army unsupported.
Thi information completely transformed Pear on's situation. No longer could
Eshowe be regarded a m rely a taging po t on the line of advance; he must
either retire to the border, or be prepared to hold the post with his entire
column. After careful deliberation, it was decided to hold the post, but with a
reduced garrison; the bulk of the auxiliaries, plus the mounted troops, would
be sent back to the border, a decision ba ed on the difficulties of feeding and
housing them. The remainder of the column would dig in.
The task facing Wynne had b come immea urably more challenging. He
had already b gun a work to surround the existing mission buildings, but
instead of a small garrison on the line of communication, it would now have
to proVide shelter for some 1,700 men indefinitely. oreover, the stark realities
underpinning hemsford's despatch suggested that it might be attacked by
overwhelming numbers at any point. Over the next few days, the garrison
worked with renewed determination, although interrupted by occasional false
alarms, which sent the men scrambling to 'fall in', trampling Wynne's careful
profiles and half-completed ramparts as they went.
One immediate improvement was to incorporate the wagons - which had
hitherto been parked outside the fort - as part of the defences. They were
placed in a line inside the perimeter of the ramparts, about ten yards from the
parapets, so a to provide a formidable inner barricade all round. The gap
between the wagons and the ramparts was large enough to allow men to move
to and fro to man the parapets, while the wagons provided an effective
traverse, which prevented any enemy fire striking into the troops' backs. The
remainder of the wagons were arranged in a line across the centre of the fort,
to provide a further traverse. At night, the wagons would provide shelter; since
there was insufficient room to erect tent within the perimeter, the men would
have to sleep under the wagons.
The fort at E howe would prove the most ambitious work built in Zululand
during the war. It was roughly 150 yards long by SO yards wide, an irregular
oblong with a salient toward the north to proVide some cover for the dead
ground there. All the buildings were incorporated within he perimeter. The
house, school and workshop had been pressed into service as sheds, and to
prevent the roofs from being a fire ri k Wynne ordered them to be plastered
with mud. The church was adopted as a hospital, and was prepared for defence
by knocking a row of loopholes through the wall about a foot below the eves.
Awooden platform was added in the tower for a lookout, and the windows and
doors were barricaded. Outside the perimeter, the outlying buildings, beyond
the stream, were destroyed with gun-cotton, while the atal ative Pioneers
worked to clear the bush. Fortunately, this gave ample supply of wood for the
job of revetting the main ramparts.
The basic techniques employed at Fort Tenedos were used to greater effect at
Eshowe. The ditch was formidable, and was 7ft deep in most places, while the
earth was piled up to provide a rampart 6ft high. A banquette inside allowed
the defender to fire over the top of the rampart. In some places, the rampart
was as high as 8ft, to allow the troops to move freely behind it without fear of
being hit by enemy fire. The outer edges of the ramparts were securely revetted
with stakes to prevent the soil from collapsing into the ditch. Gun platforms
were built at the angles to allow the column's artillery - including a Gatling
gun, manned by the aval Brigade - to fire over the ramparts.
The basic trace of the work wa finished by the end of the first week of
February, but a no Zulu attack had materialised, Wynne was able to add
significant improvements. A wooden drawbridge - which hinged upwards on
pole made from the disselbooms of wagons - was added to allow the garrison to
pass through the main entrance and across the ditches. A rolling bridge of timber 25
A photograph of the outer trench
at Eshowe, suggesting the impressive
nature of Wynne's works. In the
centre is one of the caponiers, or
covered ways, revetted with logs
and covered with soil, which
sheltered troops entering from
inside the parapet (out of the
picture, left). The troops could then
fire through the loopholes, visible
26 here, down the length of the trench.
lashed together was made for wagons. At the south-eastern angle, where a bastion
had been constructed to command falling ground outside, a stockade was built to
provide a second, higher level of fire. The stockade was made from standing trees,
with a diameter of about 2ft each, with a wooden platform behind, and 'sandbags'
piled up in front. The bag were actually supply acks, which, as soon as the
Commissariat had issued the contents, were filled with earth by the Engineers,
and used to make barricades. Similar sacks were used to make 'blindages' - screens
to protect the crews from fire - around the gun emplacements.
One of the tactical weaknesses of protracted lines of ramparts and ditches
was that the fire from the defenders did not always reach into the bottom of
the ditch, should the attacker advance that close. To counteract this, Wynne
built 'caponiers' - covered ways - in the middle of the long south wall and near
the main entrance. Asalient was cut into the trench to form a projecting angle,
and into this the caponier jutted from within the main ramparts. The sides of
the caponier were built up with takes and the roof made from timber, covered
with soil. Gaps were left in the sides to provide loopholes. The floor was below
ground level, so that troops entering the tunnel would find themselves looking
through the loopholes down the length of the trench. The effect of their fire
on any Zulus who had managed to enter the trench, and who were sheltering
there in the dead ground immediately below the ramparts, would have
been devastating.
ince the campaign had begun, the weather had been poor, and it
deteriorated once the column was based at Eshowe. Hot, sultry days gave way
in the evening to heavy downpours of rain that fell sporadically until the early
hours. Although the troops were often employed outside the fort during the
day, the garrison slept within the perimeter each night, and the passage of so
many men - and the few remaining animals - soon reduced the interior of the
fort to a quagmire. To alleviate this problem, Wynne constructed a covered
drain, a channel 11ft deep, revetted with stakes and covered over, which passed
under the ramparts on the southern face, and emptied towards a stream about
30 yards away.
With the basic perimeter secured, Wynne turned his attention to stabilising
the overall structures, and the track through the centre of the fort was made
more durable by being paved with large stones. The tracks around the
entrances were 'macadamised' with small stones produced by smashing rocks.
One perennial problem for the garri on would
remain the safety of the column's oxen. Pearson
had begun his advance with just over 400 wagons
and carts, which were drawn by over 3,000 oxen
and 100 mule. It wa clearly impossible to secure
the e within the confines of the fort, yet it was
vital that a ignificant number of them remained at
Eshowe, not only because the tran port would be
completely immobilised without them, but
because as a last resort they were a source of food.
When Pearson decided to reduce the size of the
garrison, it was judged feasible to return some of
the transport oxen to the border. On 30 January
about 1.000 oxen and 27 mules were sent back to
the border under the guard of frican drivers. By
this stage, however, Zulu patrols had cut the road, and about half the oxen
were captured only a mile or two from the mission. The rest returned to
the camp.
To corral those that remained, Wynne first arranged a cattle pen,
constructed from empty wagons, in a V shape with the wide end abutting the
outhern face of the entrenchment. The cattle were driven out each day to
pasture under guard, but the pas ag of 0 many animals clo e to the fort soon
contributed to the fouling of the ground. As a result, cattle 'kraals' were built
away from the main complex, but clo e enough to be guarded by the garrison,
and were moved several times during the occupation. Between 1 February and
16 March, an offset square cattle laager was built at the head of the valley to
the south-west of the fort, about 150 yards away; between 17 March and 4 April
th y were contained in two circular laagers opposite the southern face. Those
cattle that could not be contained within the laagers, together with the few
horses and mules whi h remained with the garri on, were driven into the
shelter of the ditches at night.
The siege of Eshowe
Pearson's decision to hold Eshowe was bas d partly on the need to maintain the
impre sion that, in the aftermath of lsandlwana, the British had not abandoned
the invasion. In that he was undoubtedly successful; King etshwayo was
indignant that the Briti h had apparently settled down in Zululand as if it was
already conquered, and he ordered his command r in the coastal district to try
every means short of a direct attack to dislodge the garrison.
It was already apparent, in the aftermath of Rorke's Drift, that Zulu frontal
assaults on defended positions were likely to be extremely costly and had little
chance of success. Although the young men who made up the bulk of the Zulu
army were confident that they could overrun the BritiSh as they had at
Isandlwana, the king forbade them to attack entrenchments, warning them
that 'if you put your faces into the lairs of the wild beasts, you are sure to get
clawed'. For several weeks after the bat les of 22/23 January, the Zulu army
disper ed to recover, but once the men were rested, and were prepared to
an wer the king's in tructions again, etshwayo directed that tho e liVing in
the area around Eshowe should collect at the royal homesteads there. About
5,000 men complied, and they were placed under the command of Prince
Dabulamanzi kaMpande - the king's younger brother, who had led the
unsuccessful attack on Rorke's Drift, and who lived locally - and
Mavumengwana ka dlela, one of the enior commander at I andlwana.
The Zulu of course had no means to conduct a close iege at their disposal,
and no capability of undermining Wynne' fortifications. evertheless, their
investment of the garrison was efficient. A cordon of temporary grass shelters
was constructed in the hills and hollows within sight of the fort, and a force of
A view along the northern face of
the fort today. showing Wynne's
enduring legacy. Trench on the left;
inner rampart right.
27
28
TOP LEFT The interior of Fort
Eshowe during the siege. The
loopholes in the church walls
are clearly visible - the tents
constituted Pearson's headquarters,
while the magaline and
quartermasters' stores are covered
with tarpaulins. The mission bell
was rung to signify an alarm. (Buffs
Collection, National Army Museum)
TOP RIGHT A sketch from Eshowe
showing how a Zulu attack might be
thwarted by wire entanglements in
the long grass. In faCt, the Zulu
considered Eshowe too impregnable
to mount a direct assault - but such
entanglements were a feature of
many British forts in Zululand.
about 500 men, rotated from those occupying the royal homesteads, watched
the post daily. They harassed Pearson's patrols, firing on the cattle guards and
attempting to ambush outlying vedettes. Whenever a major confrontation
seemed imminent, this screen of scouts could be immediately reinforced by the
reserves. Although the area close by the fort remained safe enough for the
garrison to remain outside during the day, the countryside was firmly in Zulu
hands, and it soon became impossible for runners 0 carry messages to or from
the border, giving rise to a sense of isolation which preyed increasingly on
British nerves.
Life in the fort at Eshowe
Although Wynne's defences had made the garrison at Eshowe relatively secure,
life there was far from comfortable. Pearson had begun the siege with ample
supplies of food and ammunition - over 300 rounds per rifle, 127,000 rounds
of Gatling ammunition, SOD artillery shells and 80 rockets, and roughly two
months' ration of bread and biscuit. Meat was proVided from the trek oxen, but
it was usually so tough that it had to be stewed for hours to make it edible. After
a few weeks the monotony of the diet began to affect the garrison's morale, and
regular forays were mounted to loot mealies and pumpkins from abandoned
Zulu homesteads nearby.
The weather remained changeable, and the frequent rain made conditions
within the fort highly unpleasant. If it meant that fresh water, at least, was in
plentiful supply - patrols sent to one of the streams were never interfered with,
and in any case Wynne had constructed a drain to carry water off the hospital
roof and into a reservoir, made from a wagon lined with a tarpaulin - it also
prevented the ground from drying out. The interior of the fort was a sea of mud,
and despite Pearson's best endeavours, it was impossible to prevent the water
sources from being contaminated. Areas outside the fort were designated as
latrines, while tubs were proVided within the perimeter for the same purpose each
night. Nevertheless, many of the Africans and civilians who remained with the
garrison were averse to using the specified latrines and preferred to find a quiet
spot of their own, while the animals contributed to the general contamination.
At night, the interior of the fort was not a pleasant place to be. Only the
headquarters staff were allowed tents; the remainder of the garrison slept under
the wagons. Officers generally had a wagon to themselves, or at least shared
with the colleagues from their mess, but the ordinary soldiers lay huddled
together in blankets on the wet ground. The air was heavy with the taint of
bodies and latrines, and rest was disturbed by the lOWing of the animals, and
by constant false alarms, which forced the men to stand-to and man the
ramparts in the dark. After a few days, stomach complaints, born of the
insanitary conditions, became commonplace. By day, the greatest enemy was
boredom, and Pearson worked hard to prOVide duties to keep the men
occupied. Work parties were sent out daily to construct a new road from the
fort, to erve as a hortcut for any relief column. The bands of the 3rd and 99th
regiments played concert on unday, while a missionary, the Rev. Robertson,
gave lectures on Zulu hi tory. evertheless, minor infringement of duty, the
re ults of fru tration and ennui, were common, and the offender were often
flogged as a warning to others.
The Zulu presence was a constant irritation. One private of the Mounted
Infantry was ambu hed on vedette duty and killed; another had a miraculou
escape, riding through a cordon of warrior who suddenly rose out of the gra S
to attack him; he returned to camp with a number of bullet wounds. The road
parties were constantly nip d at. Lt. artin of the Buffs wa hit by a bullet,
which passed through th p ak of hi helmet and out the other ide;
astonishingly he uffered only a flesh-wound acro s his forehead. During the
day, Wynne' Engineer marked out the cour e of the road with take - and by
night the Zulus came down to pull them up. Wynne oIved this problem by
planting an explo ive charge beneath one stake, to be triggered by a friction
device if the stake was pulled up. To warn the garri on the word 'torpedo' wa
painted on a ign nailed to the tak. That evening the garrison heard the
sound of an explo ion, and thereafter the Zulu refrained from pulling up
Wynne's stake .
Once the fort wa ecure, Wynne turned hi attention to trying to open
communication with the garrisons at the border. Although the fort had no
life in Eshowe; Naval Brigade troops
rush to man the parapets during
one of the many false alarms that
characterised the siege. (Rai England
Collection)
29
Siege warfare: Zulus interfering with
markers left out byWynne's work-
parties being blown up by a
30 booby-trapped'torpedo'.
direct line of sight with the Thukela, the mission had been built on high
ground, and half a mile away there was a good view towards the border from
the edge of the escarpment. Pearson's column had begun the war with no long-
range signalling equipment, however, and although the garrisons at forts
Pearson and Tenedos in fact remained ecure, they had no means to contact
Pearson, nor he them. After several weeks of trying, however, the Thukela
garrisons managed to improvise a means of communicating by sun-flashes, and
on 2 March outposts from the fort noticed flickers of light from the direction
of the border camps. The effect on the morale of Pearson's men was electric -
but they had no means to re pond. Wynne tackled this problem with
characteristic energy and ingenuity. His first idea was to build a hot-air balloon
from paper, to tie a message to it, and to release it on a day when the wind wa
blowing towards the Thukela; sadly, at the last minute a thunderstorm blew up
and the attempt was abandoned. ext, Wynne constructed a large screen - 12ft
by 10ft - from a black tarpaulin, and hinged on a horizontal pivot, which he
hoped to swing backwards and forwards to send messages by Morse code. 0
sooner was the screen erected, however, than a sudden squall tore it to shreds.
The problem was eventually solved when a length of lead pipIng was
discovered in the church roof and, together with an officer's shaving mirror,
converted into a makeshift heliostat. Imperfect at first - and always at the
mercy of cloudy weather - the garrison at last managed to open a viable means
of communication with the outside world.
The relief of Eshowe
In fact, the wider war had moved on considerably during Pearson's investment.
No Zulu counter-attacks had ravaged Natal at the end of February, and by the
end of the month the first British reinforcements were arriving at Durban, and
the tide of war began shifting once more in Lord helmsford's favour.
helmsford's first objective was to relieve Eshowe, and by the middle of
March he had begun to assemble a relief column at the Lower Thukela Drift.
After various false starts, the column finally began the advance from Fort
Tenedos on 29 March. The relaxed ease of the January invasion was a thing of
the past, however, and each night a determined effort was made to draw the
camp into a protective laager, to ensure against surprise attack. This was no
mean task, given the numbers of troops and wagons involved - 3,000 white
troops, 2,000 auxiliaries, with 122 carts and wagons - and the march would be
characterised by confusion and delay as the laager was built each evening - and
dismantled each morning.
On the evening of 1 April, the column camped on an open rise near the
burnt-out ruins of a Zulu royal homestead known as kwaGingindlovu. he
laager constructed that night is of particular interest, since it would be attacked
at dawn the following morning by the Zulu forces deployed around Eshowe.
The laager was a mixture of techniques that characterised such temporary
fortifications throughout the war - a Boer method applied in a rather more
regulated British military style. By no means complex, it had learned the ba ic
les on of Rorke's Drift; a aptain Molyneux, helmsford's 'laager master' on
this expedition commented, 'with sufficient men to line the shelter trench two
deep, no enemy without artillery can carry it'. The circular wagon-laager
favoured by the Boers during the Great Trek of the 1830 was found to be
unfavourable for British needs, however, because the transport wagons of 1879
were generally heavier, there were more of them than had been the case in
most Boer expeditions, and as a consequence fewer of the drivers were
experienced in making laagers on this scale. The British therefore adopted the
practice of making square laagers, with the wagons parked not end-to-end, but
en echelon. This reqUired less manoueverability on the part of each wagon; the
sides of the laagers were marked out with stakes, and the drivers simply parked
their wagons at an angle next to each other along the line. If there was no
surrounding trench, the traces and ox-yolks were left lying in the grass in front
of the wagon-pole, and these in themselves provided a significant obstacle to
any potential attacker.
At Gingindlovu, however, a 'shelter trench' - a trench with the earth thrown
up inside to form a rampart - was dug all around the laager, leaVing room for
the men to form up between the wagons and the rampart. The movements of
vehicles, oxen and troops naturally tended to trample down the grass and any
other cover within 40 or 50 yards of the position, thereby giving a clear field of
fire across the final approaches. A square was, of course, a defensive formation
that the British knew intimately; they were well aware of its strengths and its
weaknesses. The straight faces allowed for a concentration of fire on each side
as appropriate, but the corners afforded a 'dead zone', untouched by the fire
from the sides. To solve this, the British habitually placed artillery pieces in the
angles of the square.
At Gingindlovu the laager proved awesomely effective, despite the haste
with which it was constructed and the heavy overnight rain that threatened to
wash down parts of the parapets and filled the trenches with water. So large was 31
32
Men of the Eshowe relief column
entrenching a laager. Such laagers
were in effect temporary and
mobile fortifications. which could
be made in a few hours utilising a
convoy's transport wagons. Note
the wagons parked en echelon.
Chelmsford's force that his troops were able to line the ramparts four-deep, the
front two ranks kneeling, almost completely protected by the ramparts. The
transport oxen, auxiliaries and mounted troops were placed within the wagon-
laager, protected by the wagons from enemy fire on all sides. British observers
marvelled at the skilful way the Zulus deployed under fire, advancing close to
the laager under the cover of the long grass, but despite several determined
rushes - which came to within a few yards, in one instance, of the Gatling gun
protecting one corner - they were completely unable to penetrate the highly
destructive British fire. When the Zulu attacks faltered, the British cavalry and
auxiliaries sallied out to drive them from the field.
The evacuation of Eshowe
Chelmsford's victory at Gingindlovu broke the Zulu investment of Eshowe, and
the following morning detachments from his column advanced to the relief of
the garrison. Pearson had held out for 72 days; the fact that, during that time,
the Zulu had never once attempted to storm the post was in itself a tribute to
Wynne's engineering skills. To the defenders' disappointment, Chelmsford had
already decided not to hold the post; it was too far advanced and too exposed
to serve as a forward base for his planned new offensive. Instead, both the
garrison and the relief column retired to positions much closer to the border,
to await the remainder of the reinforcements from Britain. The garrison
abandoned the fort with mixed feelings, dragging the wagons out of the
traverses, loading up what remained of the serviceable supplies, and destroying
anything of military value. Before they had gone a few miles the Zulus entered
the post, and set fire to the buildings, although the entrenchments have
remained a feature of the site to this day.
During the siege the garri on's losses to enemy activity were minimal, but
35 men had died of disease, and dozens more had to be carried back to the
Thukela in wagons. Among them was Captain Warren Wynne, who had begun
to suffer the effects of fever and dysentery at the end of February, though he
had kept working throughout mo t of the iege. By the time relief came,
however, he was seriou ly ill, and despite being taken by wagon to the Thukela,
and treated with great care by the medical staff there, he died on 9 April - his
36th birthday. hor Iy before his death he was promoted to the rank of Major.
His achievements in Zululand were unequalled by any other Royal Engineer
officer during the war, but he remains little remembered today.
Officers visiting British graves on
the battlefield of Gingindlovu at
the end of the war. The ditch and
rampart thrown up around the
laager is still visible on the left.
The interior of the fort at Eshowe.
photographed c. June 1879. after
its abandonment. Note the height
of the ramparts. left. the ground
churned up when the long-
emplaced wagons were removed.
the ruined buildings and the up-
turned mission bell (right).
33
34
The first invasion: the
Centre Column
The Centre Column assembled on the windy ridge at Helpmekaar at the end of
1878, and in the nrst week of January descended into the Mzinyathi Valley and
towards the border. A wagon-track - occasionally used, but nonetheless viable
- crossed the river at Rorke's Drift and meandered towards Ulundi. ot far from
the crossing, in the shadow of a hill known to the Zulus as Shiyane, was the
farm originally built by the trader James Rorke, who had given the area its
name. Rorke himself had died in 1875, and his farm had pa sed to a wedish
missionary society. The two buildings were an ideal basis for a supply depot,
and Chelmsford had promptly requisitioned them.
The column crossed along a wide stretch of the river at dawn on 11 January.
As with the Coastal Column, the crossing was unopposed, and Chelmsford
established a camp on the Zulu bank. On 12 January, to send a clear message
to the Zulu that he meant business, he attacked and destroyed the homestead
of a border chieftain, Sihayo kaXongo, who lived a few miles ahead, along the
line of his advance. On 20 January - his progress delayed by the same bad
weather that had dogged Pearson - Chelmsford moved forward to his next
objective, the distinctive outcrop known as Isandlwana.
In the light of subsequent events, Chelmsford was much criticised for his
failure not to entrench any of the initial positions occupied by the column.
There is a suggestion that he asked for Rorke's Drift to be fortified, but there was
no sense of urgency, and the troops designated for the task were still at
Helpmekaar when the fighting began. A small stone outpost had been
constructed near the ruins of Chief Sihayo's homestead to protect parties
working on the road, but this was in no sense a permanent structure. 0
attempts were made to fortify either the large camp on the Zulu bank, or the
one at Isandlwana.
helmsford later explained his apparent contravention of his own standing
orders by pointing out that he had never intended Isandlwana to be a
permanent camp, a staging post along the line of communication, and indeed
this was true; from the moment he arrived there he had been planning a
further advance, and this would have taken place on the 22nd, had not the
Zulu intervened. He did not laager the wagons, he said, because the majority
were required to move supplies; they were only unloaded after the forward
advance on the 21st, and on the morning of the 22nd thirty wagons were due
to return to Rorke's Drift to collect provisions. The camp was not entrenched
because it covered a large area, and the ground was hard and stony.
Yet there was a certain disingenuousnes in all this. While the wagons
transporting food supplies were in constant use, those assigned as regimental
transport - carrying camp eqUipment, baggage and ammunition - were parked
behind the tents, and could indeed have been laagered. If the ground was
stony, the boulders could have been collected and piled up to make small
redoubts at key points around the camp - as Col. Wood was doing at that very
moment at Fort Thinta, further north. The real reason helmsford did not
insist on these precautions was that he did not think for a moment .that the
camp was at risk, and that the Zulu possessed the capabilities to attack it.
The shortcomings of this view were made brutally apparent on 22January. The
previous evening, Chelmsford's scouts had encountered parties of Zulus in the
hills 12 miles from Isandlwana. Still convinced that he needed to seize the
initiative to bring them to battle, Chelmsford had marched out with about half
his force, leaVing 1,700 men to guard the camp. In fact, the main Zulu army,
25,OOO-strong, had already outflanked him ahd lay much closer to Isandlwana
than he realised. When it whereabouts were discovered by patrols from the camp
at about noon on the 22nd, it advanced rapidly to the attack. The camp was
surrounded and the cattered British parties driven back through the tents and
overrun. ver 1,300 men w re killed; a mere 60 of the urvivors were Europeans.
In the aftermath of the attack on Isandlwana, the Zulu regiments
comprising their reserve, about 3,500- trong, pur ued the British survivors to
the border, and crossed the Mzinyathi River into British territory. Here they
began to raid the deserted farms and settlements on the atal bank, and moved
up towards the garrison Lord helm ford had left behind at Rorke's Drift.
The defence of Rorkels Drift
The post at Rorke's Drift consisted of two buildings about 30 yards apart, and
built in the local style. They were long, low bungalows with open verandas and
thatched roofs, the end walls built of roughly dressed stone, and the ide walls
of locally made bricks. The interior walls were of sun-dried mud brick, plastered
over. One building had served Jim Rorke as his house, and had been taken over
by the mi ionary, the Rev. Otto Witt, and hi family for the same purpose. The
other building had been a store, with a large open room on one side, which had
served to garage Rorke's wagon; the Witts had used thi building a a church.
There were a number of small authou e , including a low kitchen out the back
and, off to one side, a solitary privy. A stout cattle kraal, a dry-stone wall about
chest high, abutted the eastern end of the storehouse.
Like the mission buildings at Eshowe, the site had never been chosen with
defence in mind. Rorke had sele ted a spot with commanding views of the
Mzinyathi Valley up tream of the crossing, with his back to Shiyane hill, which
rose in a eries of terraces just 300 yards behind the buildings. Along the fran
of the building was a step :If rock, part of the same terrace structure, and the
ground fell away in a steep slope as much a 6ft high in place, broken between
the buildings with line of exposed rock. Below this ledge was a stone wall and
a tangle of bush and long gra s which had been partially cleared to make way
for an orchard of fruit trees. Further east, also below the ledge, was another
cattle kraal, larger, but less well built.
When the army had taken over control of the post, the storehou e had been
returned to its original purpose, and had been used to contain he sacks of
mealies and boxes of biscuits arrd tinned meat that constituted the basic
One of the most accurate sketches
of the attack on the mission post
at Rorke's Drift on the night of
22/23 January 1879_The pOSt had
been hastily convened into a fon
with temporary barricades of mealie
sacks and biscuit boxes; the Zulu
stormed the hospital. right, driving
the defenders back to the small
area in front of the storehouse. left.
Note the pile of mealie bags. which
was convened into a makeshift
redoubt.
3S
36
TOP LEFT The site of Rorke's Drift,
photographed at the end of the war.
In the centre is the old storehouse.
surrounded here by the stout stone
walls of Fort Bromhead. Behind is
the terrace of Shiyane hill, occupied
by Zulu musketeers during the
battle.
TOP RIGHT The storehouse at
Rorke's Drift, photographed c. June
1879. The thatch has been removed
from the roof, while the loop-holed
two-storey rear wall of Fort
Bromhead still stands to the right.
foodstuff rations. On the morning of the 22nd there were over 30 wagon loads
of such supplies, waiting for the wagons to return from Isandlwana to collect
them. They filled the storehouse to the eaves, with enough sacks over to form
two large piles in front of the veranda. They were under the care of a
detachment of commissariat officers under Commissary Walter Dunne. The
house had been converted into a makeshift hospital, where over 30 patients-
most of them suffering from injuries sustained on the march up-country,
dysentery or fever - were cared for by a small army medical detachment.
Because the post was on the atal side of the border, and therefore assumed
to be safe, a fairly relaxed atmosphere prevailed before the battle. A small
detachment from 5 Company RE, Lt. John hard and a handful of Sappers, had
hurried up ahead of the rest of the company, which was still on the road, to
alleviate helmsford's chronic shortage of RE personnel. They had arrived by
wagon on the 17th, and had camped at the Drift, where Chard was employed
repairing and supervising the post on the eve of the column's general advance.
Once the main column had moved forward from the camp on the river,
however, it was left to a solitary company of the 2/24th Regiment - about 90
men under Lt. Gonville Bromhead - and a company of the NNC auxiliaries to
protect the post.
At about noon on the 22nd, the garrison had their first inkling of events at
lsandlwana, when the sound of distant firing drifted across the river. Shortly
after, the first mounted survivors from the battle began to come past, calling
out that the camp had been taken, and that the Zulu were coming to attack
Rorke's Drift.
The news was deeply shocking, and posed a very real dilemma to the
garrison. Should they try and hold their ground, and attempt to check the Zulu
incursion and protect the stockpile of supplies, or should they secure the safety
of the ick by falling back on the nearest British garrison? Strategically, it made
little difference, as the Zulu were already across the border, and the loss of the
supplies was inconsequential in the wake of the destruction of the camp at
Isandlwana; it was merely a question of choosing the course that offered the
best hope of survival. Since the nearest garrison was at Helpmekaar - several
miles away up a steep escarpment - there was little hope of reaching it before
the Zulu arrived. Instead, the garrison decided to stay where they were, and to
use the stockpile of stores to improvise a barricade.
With the Zulu attack imminent - in fact, only about an hour elapsed
between the first news of the disaster and the arrival of the Zulus - Chard had
no time to plan even rudimentary earthworks. The ramparts would be made
from the sacks and boxes of stores, using whatever defensive advantages were
afforded by the buildings and the existing lie of the ground. B Company's
tents, which had been placed at the foot of the hill, were struck, and their two
wagons dragged into a line between the corners of the two buildings at the
back. A line of boxes was run underneath them, and this was piled up with
mealie sacks until it constituted a secure barricade about 4ft high. Defenders
were placed in both buildings, and loopholes
knocked through the walls with pickaxes.
The front of the post was more problematic,
however, a the open verandas made both
buildings more vulnerable. At the eastern end, the
gap between the well-built cattle kraal and the
storehouse was sealed with mealie bags, and the
kraal incorporated into the perimeter. hard then
ordered a long barricade to be erected along the
front, taking in both buildings and extending to
the f<:lr western corner of the hospital. Although
this was a considerable distance for a rampart
unsupported by any form of revetment, the
defender were greatly helped by the presence of
the rocky ledge. This in itself formed a natural
barrier, and even a wall just two or three bags high
was sufficient to shelter men crouching behind it,
and secure them against attackers on the other
side, 6 t below. Although the garrison worked
hard to complete the barricades, the wall was not
finished when the Zulu arrived. Indeed, in front of
the hospital - phy ically, the furthe t distance
from the stockpile of sacks and boxes - the
rampart remained both low and flimsy, hored up
in one place with a piece of planking.
At about 4.15 pm, a smatter of shots behind
Shiyane - the Zulu firing at mounted auxiliaries
who had escaped from Isandlwana - announced
their imminent arrival. The N C, who had
worked hard at erecting the barricades, promptly
threw down their weapons and fled over the
barricades and into the bush. Chard now found
himself with too great a perimeter to defend with the number of troops at his
disposal, and immediately ordered that a traverse barricade be constructed
from biscuit boxes along a line running from the western end of the front of
the storehouse to the front barricade. With gaps left for the men to pass
through, this allowed for the area around either building to be abandoned
should it be overrun.
At about 4.30 pm the advance guard of the Zulu force came round the
western flank of Shiyane, and advanced at a run straight towards their nearest
target, the back wall. The battle of Rorke's Drift had begun.
he battle of Rorke's Drift
It is usual to consider the subsequent battle in terms of the gallantry of the
defenders, or even the remarkable courage and endurance displayed across
some eight or ten hour by the attackers. Tactically, however, the crucial lesson
to be learned from the battle was of the value of even the most limited form of
entrenchments, and of the complete inability of the Zulu to overcome them,
In that short hour, and without even the level of engineering work built by
Wynne at Fort Tenedos, the garrison had turned the mission at Rorke's Drift
into a trongpoint that proved una sailable.
Throughout, the Zulu at acked the post piecemeal, giving the lie to
contemporary claims that the invasion of atal was premeditated. The first
assault was made by about 500 or 600 men, who tried to rush the rear wall. The
projecting angles of the buildings, however, served as a crude form of bastion,
and as the assault reached to within 30 yards of the barricade, it came under
such a crossfire from the loopholes on either side that it faitered. The warriors
Officers walking the rounds inside
Fort Bromhead in February or
March 1879. Note the wooden
centre platform. the wooden
banquette - and the men sleeping
in the open.
37
The site of the post at Rorke's
Drift. The church in the background
was built during the 1880s
on the site of the storehouse:
the barricades ran across the top
of the ledge in the foreground.
Six-feet-high in places, this natural
feature became a formidable
rampart when topped with even
a low barricade.
abandoned the attack and treamed
round the western end of the
hospital to occupy the bush in front
of the post. By this stage, further
bodies of Zulus, coming up behind,
were su ked into the battle.
Although the bush at the front of the
post would proVide good cover for
as aults, that - combined with the
shortage of the British front - and
the way the Zulu attack developed
meant that the commander, Prince
Dabulamanzi, was never able to co-
ordinate his attacks or use his
numerical advantage to good effect.
Indeed, the majority of the Zulu
probably spent most of the battle
crouching down in the bush,
searching for an opportunity to
exploit British weaknesses by short,
determined rushes.
The garrison' inability to clear a
field of fire along the front of the post was arguably their greatest weakness. The
Zulus massed behind the stone wall - only a few feet from the foot of the
terrace in front of the hospital - with relative impunity. Here they mounted a
ries of attacks that were narrowly repul ed each time at bayonet point. The
barricade proved largely usel ss here, the fighting raging at hand-to-hand.
Indeed, after about six such attacks hard was forced to order the garrison to
abandon the veranda of the hospital and fall back to a rampart hastily
improvised on the ea tern corner of the building. In the meantime, the Zulu
extended through the bush across the front of he post, and mounted attacks
to prob for weaknesses along the front wall. Here they were unable to make
any headway, however, frustrated by the height of the broken ledge, which
prevented them stabbing the oldiers above them.
At the same time, numbers of Zulu armed with firearm took posse sian of
the hiyane terrace, which overlooked the post. From this position, a squad of
well-trained riflemen eqUipped with modern weapons could have rendered the
British position untenable within minutes. The Zulu, however, were untrained,
and were firing obsolete trade weapons, which were operating at the extreme
limit of their range. They were also firing into the evening sun. Below them,
the oldier on the rear wall were, conversely, firing at an optimum range for
the Martini-Henry rifles, and with the sun at their backs. In the firefight that
followed, the garrison undoubtedly had the upper hand. Even so, the Zulu fire
- striking down largely at random in the centre of the yard - cau ed casualties
The improvised fort at Rorke's
Drift
This illustration shows an overall
view of the position from the front.
The scene is set shortly before the
Zulu approach, and the British troops
are in position all the way around the
perimeter. There were about ISO
men in the defensive garrison overall,
and here they can be seen building
38 the barricades, and piling up sacks.
I Cattle kraal
2 Smaller, better-built kraal
3 Storeroom
4 Cookhouse
5 Ovens
6 Ox-wagons
7 Hospital
8 Fenced garden
9 Biscuit-box barricade
under construction
10 Two pyramids of mealie bags
I I Wall of mealie bags
125ft-high wall
13 Toilet
14 Wall abandoned during
construction
152ft. ditch
16 Water cart
39
40
TOP LEFT The fort at Helpmekaar,
built following the disaster at
Isandlwana. In profile the fort was
a simple oblong with projecting
bastions at each corner; the large
galvanised huts that sheltered some
of the Centre Column's supplies at
the time of the battle have been
removed. leaving only the smaller
wooden stores. The fort was
overlooked by a hill several hundred
yards away. (Killie Campbell
Collection. Durban)
TOP RIGHT Building the fon at
Helpmekaar after Isandlwana. The
sketch shows auxiliaries digging the
trench and building the ramparts;
although the height of the defences
is exaggerated, it gives a good
impression of the appearance of a
typical British work during the war.
which Chard could not afford to sustain, and at about 6 pm he gave the order
to abandon the yard and retire to the area in front of the storehouse.
To the Zulu - who had by now forced an entry into the hospital, had set fire
to the roof, and were fighting with the defenders hand-to-hand - victory mu t
have seemed very close; they had captured nearly half the British position. Yet in
fact, the true situation was largely the opposite, as hard was now much more
secure, with less perimeter to defend, and the storehouse blocking the worst of
the fire from Shiyane. It was by now getting dark, and the flames from the
burning hospital lit up the area immediately around, providing an unexpected
means of illuminating each fresh Zulu attack. Inside the hospital, the defenders
fought from room to room, knocking holes in the flimsy interior walls where
there were no doors, and dragging the patients after them until at last they
emerged through a window into the abandoned yard, and scurried across to the
storehouse, covered by the fire of men lining the biscuit-box barricade.
For several hours, the Zulu attempted to find weak spots in the new British
position, exploiting the gloom at the far end of the storehouse - away from the
hospital - to attack the cattle kraal, driVing the defenders back to the interior
wall. Two large piles of mealie bags still lay in front of the store, however, and
these were dragged together to form a small redoubt, the top scooped out, like
a cone, to house a handful of riflemen. These men could fire over the heads of
the men on the wall, just a few yards away, and bring a devastating extra layer
of fire to bear on each attack. Attempts to repeat the success of the firing of the
hospital roof were thwarted by the defenders of the storehouse loopholes, who
shot down Zulus with burning grass attached to their spears as they approached.
Hampered by darkness - which made even the limited co-ordination of the
daylight attacks impossible - and unable to force an entry into the British
position, the Zulu began to withdraw in the early hours of the 23rd, and by
dawn the following morning they had abandoned the field.
The devastation around the post bore testimony to not only the fierce
nature of the fighting, but to the destructiveness of British fire at close range.
Over 350 Zulu bodies were dragged from around the barricades, and dozens
more lay on the line of retreat. Altogether as many as 600 Zulu were thought
to have been killed - as much as 20 per cent of the total attacking force. The
number of wounded is unknown, but probably also ran to hundreds.
onversely, although many of hard's men were wounded, just 17 were
killed - extraordinary proof of the capacity of even the most baSic barricade to
nullify the effect of Zulu close-quarter weapons.
The aftermath of Rorke's Drift
On the afternoon of 22 January, two companies of the 1/24th Regiment, who
had been left to garrison the camp at Helpmekaar, started the march down the
steep pass to reinforce the garrison at Rorke's Drift. Along the way, they were
passed by the first terrified survivors from !sandlwana, fleeing in the opposite
direction, and when they reached the foot of the escarpment, they could see
bodies of Zulu moving across the road ahead of them, and the mission station
in flames beyond. onvinced that the post had already fallen, they marched
hurriedly back to Helpmekaar to defend the camp there.
The post at Helpmekaar consisted of three large wooden sheds, with
galvanised iron roofs, and five smaller outhouses, all of which had been erected
to house the supplies that would be accumulated there en route forward to the
column. By the time the 24th returned to the post, a handful of survivors had
already reached it, and began feverishly preparing it for defence. A number of
wagons parked close by were dragged into a makeshift laager and piled up with
supplies, and a shallow trench hastily dug around it. The return of the infantry
speeded up the process, so that by nightfall the post was in a reasonable state
of defence. By that time a very real state of alarm prevailed, and the garrison,
about 180 strong, manned the barricades all night in expectation of attack.
When dawn broke the folloWing morning, a heavy mist layover the hills, and
when a party'of auxiliaries approached from the direction of Rorke's Drift they
were taken for Zulus, and a few shots were fired before the error was realised.
Indeed, the panic extended beyond Helpmekaar and further down the road
into atal. Beyond the Biggarsberg escarpment, at Helpmekaar, two companies
of the 4th Regiment under Col. Bray were on the march up when news of
Isandlwana reached them. They turned off the road to the nearby magistrate's
Sunset at Helpmekaar; troops strike
their tents and march inside the
fort for security overnight. This was
a common routine in most of the
British forts early in the war.
Helpmekaar, sketched shortly after
Isandlwana. This picture shows both
the three iron sheds that protected
the Centre Column's supply dump,
left, and the wooden sheds, right.
Note the way that the troops are
forming the rampart by piling up
earth from the trench; and the way
the wagons beyond are barricaded
with supplies. 41
42
The presence of journalists at
Helpmekaar meant that the fort
received more coverage than its
strategic importance warranted.
Nevertheless. these three sketches
of the interior provide a vivid
impression of life in many of the
Anglo-Zulu War forts; note the
ramparts revetted with mealie bags.
the blindage screening the emplaced
gun, the barricaded wagons inside
the perimeter, and the crowded
conditions during an alarm.
residency at MSinga, occupied the buildings, and knocked loopholes through
the walls. When no attack had developed by the 24th, Bray decided to move
his position to a better defensive site, a stony knoll on the far side of the road.
Here on the 29th he was reinforced by Major Bengough's 2nd Battalion of the
1st Regiment, N C. A few days later Bray resumed his march to Helpmekaar,
leaving Bengough to hold the post at Msinga.
In fact, by that stage - although the remnants of the Centre Column did not
yet know it - the immediate danger of a Zulu attack had already passed. Lord
Chelmsford, who had spent the 22nd searching in vain for the Zulu in the hills
beyond Isandlwana, had returned to find the camp devastated. After a grim
night spent among the freshly dead on the battlefield, he returned to Rorke's
Drift the following morning. Leaving the remains of his command at Rorke's
Drift, and paUSing only to order that both Rorke's Drift and Helpmekaar be
properly fortified, he rode to Pietermaritzburg to alvage what he could of his
plan of campaign.
At Helpmekaar the situation was improved on the 29th by the arrival at last
of aptain Jones' 5th ompany RE, whose march to the front had been
delayed by bad weather. While half the company proceeded to Rorke's Drift,
the remainder set about constructing a proper fort at Helpmekaar. The
entrenchments dug on the evening of the 22nd were widened and a thick
rampart constructed inside. In its final form, the fort at Helpmekaar consisted
of an oblong, with projecting bastions at all four corners. The wagons were
placed inside the walls, and heavily revetted with stacks and boxes of supplies.
[n the centre stood the three iron sheds, the smaller huts, and a make hift
hospital. Three 7-pdr guns were placed at three of the angles.
At Rorke's Drift, meanwhile, the remains of Lord he[msford's command
was camped alongside B ompany and the veterans of he battle of the
22nd/23rd. As oon as helmsford had arrived from [sand[wana on the
morning of the 23rd, attempts were made to improve the defences. The thatch
was removed from the roof of the storehouse, the remaining walls of the
hospital bUilding were pulled down, and the temporary barricade
strengthened. With the arrival of the Engineers at the end of the month, a new,
more permanent post was constructed, and called Fort Bromhead. This was
made from stone, which could be collected in abundance from the Shiyane
terraces, and followed broadly Chard's old defensive lines. At the centre wa the
storehouse, the rafters now covered with tarpaulins, and linked to the cattle
Auxiliaries of Major Harcourt
Bengough's 2/1 st NNC parade at
the foot of Fort Bengough. built on
a knoll near the road on the Natal
side of the Biggarsberg escarpment.
Note the tents for officers and
NCOs within the walls; and the
daytime shelters for the men,
right. (KwaZulu Natal Archives,
Pietermaritzburg Depot)
Part of the walls of Fort Bengough
today. showing the extent to which
it commanded the open countryside
around. At one paint the walls were
as high as 15ft, and loopholed.
43
44
Fort Melvill. the strong stone fort
built overlooking the ponts at
Rorke's Drift in March 1879,
photOgraphed from the Zulu bank.
kraal by a stone wall. The perimeter followed the lines of Chard's barricades,
ending in the near wall of the hospital - the only one still standing - which
was incorporated into the defences. Across the front of the post the wall was
over 7ft high, with regular loopholes to fire through. At the back, however,
facing Shiyane, it was much higher, to provide a second layer of fire, with firing
platforms raised from planking. There were no bastions at the corners, but at
least one wooden platform was built to proVide a raised lookout post.
Fort Bengough
At MSinga, Bengough's men meanwhile had been building their own secure
fort. It was made entirely of loose stones, the walls piled up about 6ft high and
3ft thick. Originally an oblong with projecting bastions at opposite corners, it
was later expanded into a flattened oval, and the walls raised to 15ft, with
loopholes. The interior was divided into three by simple stone traver es, the
officers occupying one end, the men the other, while the centre contained a
square magazine. Once the tension along the border began to dissipate, both
officers and men erected grass huts below the knoll for their convenience
during the daytime, and the interior was only occupied at night. Bengough
proved surprisingly adept at commanding auxiliaries, and used the inactivity
to improve his men's musketry and general training. The fort was appropriately
known as Fort Bengough.
In the weeks after the battles, life nonetheless remained extremely
unpleasant for the garrisons at both Rorke's Drift and Helpmekaar. Ithough
the men were allowed out during the day, they slept within the forts at night,
which were both overcrowded and insanitary. Their discomfort was made
worse by the fact that all Chelmsford's men had lost their tents, spare clothing
and much of their kit at Isandlwana; many, indeed, had only the uniforms they
stood up in. As these became worn, men resorted to cutting holes in the end
and sides of mealie sacks, and wearing them as makeshift greatcoats. The
weather remained bad, and the area around both fort soon became a sea of
mud, although at Rorke's Drift B ompany were accorded the honour of
sleeping under the eaves of the storehouse, protected by the tarpaulins. The
general bad smell produced by 00 many human bodies in close proximity, and
by the rotting acks of provisions, was exacerbated at Rorke's Drift by the
number of unburied Zulu corpses which lay undiscovered in the long grass or
hidden in crannies and hollows, and which decomposed rapidly. Moreover,
those who had survived the battles - and even those of Chelmsford's command
who had seen too much of Isandlwana on the night of the 22nd - were
suffering the effects of trauma, and disturbed the sleep of the garrisons at night
by crying out in their leep. The fear of a sudden Zulu attack was very real, and
false alarms at night were common. Africans found in the vicinity of either
camp who could not account for hem elves were shot as spies.
Fort Melvill
By March, it was clear that this situation could not prevail indefinitely, and the
Engineers were ordered to construct a new fort closer to the river, which would
both house the garrison and protect the Drift itself. This fort was initially
known to the men as Fort Revenge - for Isandlwana - but Lord Chelmsford was
uncomfortable with the association, and the name was changed to Fort elvill,
after t. Teignmouth Melvill of the 1/24th, who had been killed at lsandlwana,
attempting to ave the Queen's olour of his battalion.
Fort Melvill was the first purpose-built work constructed directly on the
central border on a site selected specifically for defence (all the others having
been hastily erected to protect existing supply dumps). It was on rising ground
a few yards above the road, and directly overlooked the pool where the pants
were anchored. In plan it was an oblong with projecting bastions at the
corners, and it followed the usual design of an outer trench with walls inside.
The interior of Fort Melvill. showing
the stone banquette, right, and the
huts erected to shelter both officers
and men. left. In the centre is
an improvised shelter made of
ammunition boxes. and roofed with
planks - a feature of many such
forts in Zululand.
45
46
The remains of Fort Melvill today;
the ditches and crumbled stone
walls, now overgrown. can be seen
on the left. The fort's commanding
position relative to the river is
obvious.
The walls were partially made of brick - some of which may have been cut and
un-dried for the purpose - and partially of stone. Rows of aloes - which have
thick, spiky leaves - were planted around the post to serve as an abattis, and
discarded bottles were thrown into the trench and sma hed. The fort was
largely completed by early April, and the garrison at the mission station began
to move down to occupy it. As a refinement, the side nearest the river was
covered over to provide sleeping quarters for both officers and men. Although
the old garrison from the mission were a first delighted to be free of the
conditions which prevailed there, a few grumbled later that Fort Melvill was far
from ideal either, being unsuited to prolonged occupation by large numbers of
troops, and plagued by damp.
By April, the tension along the border had largely dissipated in any case. The
renewed fighting at the end of March had moved the focus of the war to the
northern and coastal sectors, and had left the British decidedly in the ascendant.
The first invasion: the
Northern Column
01. Wood's Left Flank olumn established their first camp in Zululand in
January overlooking the White Mfolozi River within sight of a distinctive hill
known as Thinta's Kop. It may be that Wood intended this to be a permanent
post on the lines of communication, and between 19 and 21 January his
command built a work to protect it. Known as Fort Thinta, this was a imple
stone structure, rather like the civilian laagers, and no more than 30 yards
square. It was never intended to contain the entire column, but rather to serve
as a bastion against which to anchor the infantry deployment. From Fort
Thinta, Wood made a number of forays against local Zulu concentrations
around the Zungwini and Hlobane mountains; on 24 January, while
skirmishing in this area, he received the first news of Isandlwana.
The destruction of the Centre Column It:'ft Wood as every bit unsupported as
Pearson on the coast, and, concerned for the safety of the civilian settlements
along the Transvaal border behind him, Wood decided to shift his position a few
miles north-west to a more commanding site on the Khambula ridge.
Camp Khambula
The camp at Khambula would remain Wood's base for several month, and the
exact position was shifted several times for sanitary reasons. From the time he
arrived, Wood obviously shared the prevailing opinion that his camp might be
attacked, and while he chose not to build the complex structure Wynne had
supervised on the coast, he nonetheless ensured that each of his camps was
protected by wagon laagers and some sort of earthwork redoubt.
By mid-February Wood had occupied the best defensive po ition on the
ridge, a spot that was destined to playa decisive role in the war. The ground
itself lay greatly in Wood's favour; to the north, it fell away gently across an
open slope towards the streams that made up the headwaters of the White
Mfolozi, a mile away. To the south, however, it dropped in two or three terraces
into a much steeper valley, which was broken at the bottom by marshy ground
and bush. In the centre of the ridge was a narrow knoll with a steep approach
across the last few yards on three sides of the summit. Wood used this knoll as
a natural bastion, and improved its defensive potential by building a redoubt
The military fort at Utrecht, on the
Transvaal/Zulu border. This fort had
been built as early as December
1877, when British troops mounted
an abortive campaign against King
Sekhukhune of the Pedi. Throughout
the Anglo-Zulu War, it served as a
supply depot for Wood's base at
Khambula. The fort was a typical
earthwork. and was built close to
the stone civilian laager. 47
48
--'""-
TOP LEFT Wood's camp at Khambula.
looking eastwards. Wood occupied
the Khambula ridge in late January,
and in mid February shifted to this
commanding position. The redoubt
is on the knoll in the centre of the
picture, with the main laager in the
foreground, and the cattle laager
to the right. This was the position
attacked by the Zulu army on
29 March. (Sherwood Foresters'
Museum, Nottingham Castle)
TOP RIGHT The interior of the fort
at Utrecht, with men of the 80th
Regiment in the foreground. Note
the shed built to house the
inevitable stockpile of supplies.
(Anglo-Zulu War Historical Society)
along the top. This was small - only about 30 yards long by less than 10 wide
- but it was large enough to shelter two field guns and about 100 men. In shape
it was oblong, widening somewhat at the eastern end, and shaped to a point.
As usual it consisted of an outer trench with dislodged stones and earth piled
up to form the rampart. Contemporary sketches suggest that it was a
formidable structure, but there are no references to raised platforms being
constructed for the artillery, so it was probably in fact about shoulder high.
Wood placed his camp about this redoubt to provide several points of
overlapping and mutually supportive fire. A large wagon laager was built on
open ground about 300 yards west of the redoubt. The wagons were arranged
end-to-end and chained together, and a shallow ditch cut around the outside.
The sods were piled up beneath the wagons, which were further barricaded
with mealie sacks. Unlike Chelmsford's laager at Gingindlovu, there was no gap
between the rampart and the wagons for the men to occupy; they knelt down
under the wagons themselves, behind the low ramparts, or in the wagon beds.
On a terrace immediately below the redoubt, just 100 yards away, Wood
constructed a second entrenched laager, to hold the column's cattle during an
attack. This was linked to the redoubt by a palisade, made by cutting a narrow
trench and pushing into it roughly-cut planks to form a hedge above head
height. Although not sturdy enough to prevent a determined press of men
from trampling it down, it was enough to hamper enemy movement between
the cattle kraal and the redoubt, and to serve as an abattis, holding up an attack
within almost point-blank range of the defenders.
In an attempt to keep the site sanitary, the troops erected their camp outside
the works, immediately south of the main laager, while Wood's African
auxiliaries built temporary huts on a spur nearby. The livestock were driven
into the cattle laager each night, but the ground was regularly cleared of
manure, which was deposited on a rubbish heap SOO yards away to the west.
The battle of Khambula
From his base at Khambula Wood regularly harassed local Zulu loyalists, with the
result that when, in mid March, King Cetshwayo re-assembled his army, he
directed it to attack Wood's position. Well aware of the British build up underway
on the borders, and unable to oust Pearson from his fortifications at Eshowe, he
directed instead that the army should now try to dislodge Wood at Khambula.
Although the king did not accompany the army in person, he nonetheless
gave his commanders specific instructions that reveal the extent to which the
army's impotence in the face of fortifications had already entered the Zulu
psyche. The army, he told them, was to make whatever feints it could to draw
the British out hom their positions so that it could destroy them in the open, as
it had at Isandlwana; on no account was it to attack 'strongholds'. Sadly for the
future of the kingdom, the izinduna found it impossible to adhere to this advice.
The Zulu army reached the area near Khambula on 28 March, and began the
struggle with an unexpected victory. Wood's cavalry detachments had that day
mounted a raid on the Hlobane mountain; arriving in time to catch them
scattered and a long way from their base, the main Zulu army easily routed them.
Yet this victory instilled in the warriors a fatal over-confidence and enthusiasm,
while at the same time giving Wood warning of the army's approach. As a result
the outcome of the battle of Khambula would be very different.
The battle, which began at noon the following day (29 March),was both the
most fiercely contested struggle of the war, and proof of the overwhelming
advantages afforded the British by their fortifications. The Zulu approach was
visible across several miles of difficult country, allowing Wood ample time to
prepare his position. The tents outside the laager were struck, the men allotted
their place, and ammunition boxes opened in readiness. Six field guns were
placed in the open on the slopes between the main laager and the redoubt, an
exposed position that nonetheless allowed them free room to manoeuvre to
face the Zulu attacks as they developed.
Despite the king's instructions, the young men who made up the bulk of the
Zulu regiments, buoyed up by their success the day before, had little time for
complex strategies, and were keen to attack the camp directly. Unable, and
perhaps unwilling, to restrain them, the commanders deployed them in their
classic encircling formation, the right flank, or 'horn', swinging round to the
north of the camp, the centre, or 'chest', moving up the far end of the ridge to
the east, and the left 'horn' moving into the steeper valley to the south. Seeing
them deploy, Wood confessed afterwards that he feared he had insufficient
men to counter an attack on all sides, but in the event the left 'horn' became
bogged down in the marshy valley bottom, so that the right 'horn' was in
position before the rest of the army was in place. Realising this, Wood sent his
mounted men to harry the Zulu right into making an unsupported attack.
That first attack lost the Zulu the battle - and arguably the war. Rushing
forward across the open slope, the Zulu were exposed to a storm of fire from
the northern face of the main laager and redoubt. A few determined elements
reached the wagons only to find there was no way in; the majority stalled and
took what cover they could behind the low anthills that scattered the slope.
After holding this position with great determination, they abandoned the
attack and retired to the cover of a rocky outcrop further east. The sound of this
assault brought the left 'horn' hurrying to the attack, however, emerging from
the dead ground at the head of the valley just two or three hundred yards from
the cattle laager. Once again, a few warriors struggled to fight a way into the
cattle laager but were frustrated by the barricades. The rest suffered terribly
from close-range rifle fire and from the guns, which had turned to face them,
and retired back down into the shelter of the valley.
The rest of the battle consisted of a brutal slogging match in which the Zulus
sought continually to regain their co-ordination, and Wood sought to frustrate
them. Both 'horns' made further assaults, only to be driven back each time,
while the 'chest', advancing towards the narrow eastern end of the redoubt,
charged close enough for several Zulu to fall dead at the foot of the ramparts
before being driven back. At one point, the limitations of Wood's
unsophisticated fortifications were almost exposed by Zulu marksmanship,
which had improved since Isandlwana by the capture of nearly 1,000 BritiSh
Martini-Henry rifles. Elements of the left 'horn' occupied the camp rubbish
heap, which was not only crowned with a luxuriant growth of grass and
mealies, but which overlooked the cattle laager. Enfilading fire from this
position struck down among the defenders of the laager forcing them to
withdraw, and allOWing the Zulu to occupy it. Moreover, when Wood sent a
sortie into the open, to disperse Zulu assembling in the dead ground to the
south, fire from the rubbish dump soon forced the British to withdraw to the
safety of the wagons. Nevertheless, for the most part the entrenched wagons,
and in particular the redoubt, proved more than adequate protection against
Zulu fire. For all that one officer recalled that the Zulu bullets struck down 'like
hail', casualties within were light. 49
V1
o
Khambula Camp
Khambula Camp was essentially a fortified camp on an
open grassy ridge..It comprised a complex of linked
defensive laagers and a redoubt. The wagons in the
protective laagers were parked end to end, with each of
the trails under the wagon in front.A 2ft-deep. 4ft-wide
="'-
trench was dug out on the external side of each wagon,
and the sods piled up between ~ h e wheels along the
outside edges. acting as a protective firing platform (see
item 7). This scene shows the camp immediately prior to
the Zulu attack.
3
~ ~ "
\ , ~
~
I Main laager, containing horses
2 Rows of fallen tents
3 Gun crews in the open
4 Cattle laager
S 6ft-high palisade, made of thornwood
6 Redoubt
7 Inset detailing the firing positions in and
under a laager wagon
After about four hours, th Zulu were becoming exhausted, and Wood went
onto the offensive. Companies were despatched from the main laager \0
recapture the cattle laager and to drive the Zulu left back into the valley to the
south, and once the Zulu began \0 withdraw, Wood sent his mounted
detachments to pursue them. Exacting revenge for the Hlobane debacle the day
before, they chased the Zulu across several miles of country, cutting down
hundreds who were too tired to resist. When it was over, the British had just
three officers and 25 men killed; in contrast, 7H5 lulu bodies were dragged away
from around the camp, and hundreds more layout on the line of retreat.
The lulu had not lost the battle through lack of courage or skill. Despite he
advantages of the British position, they had reached at different points both
the main laager and the redoubt, and had for a time captured the cattle laager.
N verthele , they had remained throughout desperately exposed to the
curtains of fire laid down around the British position and a a result, as at
Rorke's Drift, had been unable to exploit their numbers to force an entry
through the barricades. The heavy losses endured at Kilambula (lisp lied
something of the ontidence which had prevailed among the Zulu since
I andlwana, and were exacerbated by the further defeat of the force
concentrated n ar Esllowe a few days later.
By the end 0 the first week of April IH79, tile war had turned decisively in
fa our 0 the British, and the role of fortifications in that turn had been decisive.
The final stage of the battle of
Khambula. 29 March 1879.The
redoubt is in the centre. with the
main laager left. and the cattle laager
right. A company of the III 3th
is driving the Zulu left horn back
into the valley to the south of the
position; note the gun teams in the
open. behind. (Taunton Museum)
51
The drift over the amaTigulu River
with the low profile of Fort
Crealock on the horizon. Fort
Crealock was one of a number
of fortified depots built by the
I St Division; the damage wrought
by the passage of frequent wagon
convoys is obvious in the
foreground.
The second invasion;
the war of fortification
The victories at Khambula and Gingindlovu checked the Zulu ascendancy that
had prevailed since Isandlwana. trategically, Lord helmsford had gained little
since the invasion of January - his columns remained close to the borders - but
the steady stream of reinforcements flowing through Durban had immeasurably
strengthened his hand. Throughout May he prepared a new plan of invasion.
One column, made up of Pearson's old command and the Eshowe Relief
Column, combined and re-designated the 1st Division, would use the complex
at forts Pearson and Tenedos, and an advance post maintained at Gingindlovu,
as a base. They were to then advance up the coast, keeping seaward of Eshowe,
and hopefully establish a beachhead on the Zululand coast to receive supplies
by sea. An entirely new column, the 2nd Division, would cross into Zululand
north of Rorke's Drift and, by-passing the battlefield, join the old projected line
of advance of the Centre Column beyond lsandlwana. This column would
rendezvous with Wood's column - now re-designated the Flying Column - and
the two would advance in tandem and fight as a single unit.
The easy confidence that had prevailed before Isandlwana had long gone,
and indeed a nervousness prevailed among the troops fresh out from England,
which would lead to frequent false alarms. As a result, Chelmsford now placed
great emphasis in his Standing Orders on the need to protect every halt on the
line of march. As a result, the second invasion became - to a far greater extent
than before - a war of fortification.
The Ist Division; forts Crealock,
Chelmsford, Napoleon, Richards and Argyll
This was particularly true in the coastal ector. The victory at Gingindlovu had
severely undermined the ability of the Zulu in that area to resist, and
helmsford's orders reflected the fact that the 1st Division's role was largely as
an army of occupation. It was to ensure that no further resistance emerged by
destroying Zulu royal home teads which might serve as a rallying point, and
establishing strong bases which would serve both as supply depots and to
intimidate the local population.
52
The 1st Division began its forward move on 21 April, long before the 2nd
Division had been assembled upcountry. Ironically, the very size of the 1st
Division - nearly 5,000 white and 2,000 black troops - which made it so
formidable, also hampered its ability to advance. By now, the burgeoning Army
demand for transport wagons had outstripped what colonial atal could
willingly supply, and the resulting shortage was felt mainly on the coast. With
too few wagons to orchestrate a general advance, Maj. Gen. Henry Crealock
opted instead to establish his posts first, then forward supplies in a series of
convoys afterwards. Work on the first supply depot began on 23 June, on the far
side of the drift of the amaTigulu River, and it was called Fort Crealock, after
the commanding officer. Once that was secure, Fort Chelmsford, commanding
the crossing of the yezane River, was begun on 29 June; Fort apoleon,
overlooking the Mlalazi River, was begun on 25 June; Fort Richards was built
on 1 July to command the shore above the chosen landing point at Port
Durnford; and Fort Argyll, an advanced post, was built in late August on the
Mhlatuze. ot until forts Crealock, Chelmsford and apoleon were largely
complete did the general advance from the Thukela begin.
The 1st Division was destined never to be attacked, and its war consisted
largely of endless convoy duty, of escorting full wagons up the line and empty
ones back. Where the convoys could not march comfortably between the
A distant view of Fort Chelmsford,
another of the Ist Division's depots
in the coastal sector. The fort is
under construction here: the
wooden frames of the sheds, which
were a feature of the site, are just
visible on the skyline. A feature of
Fort Chelmsford was a deep trench
running down to the nearby River
Nyezane, built either to protect
watering parties, or for drainage;
construction of this feature is in
progress on the right.
A sketch of Fort Chelmsford with
details of the magazine; note that
most of the men are camped
outside the fort itself. (Killie
Campbell Collections, Durban) 5]
major posts in a day, temporary march laagers were constructed, remembered,
if at all, with names like Dunn's Laager or Walker's Laager. The usual method
was simply to park the wagons en echelon and entrench them. The
unpredictable weather meant that the tracks were soon turned to mud, and the
corpses of oxen - worked to death by the heavy loads -littered the roadside. As
a result, a general air of discomfort and sickness prevailed among the camps,
exacerbated by a sense of frustration at the slow progress of the campaign. At
Fort Chelmsford, in particular, there was a debilitating outbreak of disease. Life
in the forts remained no more comfortable than it had throughout the war.
Today, this area of Zululand is heavily cultivated with sugarcane, and many
of the remains of the coastal forts have been obliterated. This, together with a
lack of detailed contemporary descriptions, means that it is difficult to be
precise about the construction, although in general terms in each case the forts
were earthworks with the usual combination of trenches and ramparts. A
notable exception is Fort Crealock, whose broadly square profile, with a
projecting angle on the north side, was complemented by a sophisticated
bastion on the south-west corner, which enabled flanking fire to be directed
down the western and southern walls, and by a ravelin - a V-shaped bastion
with its base on the main wall - on the eastern side. The interior was protected
from crossfire by a single traverse, while an abattis of felled trees and bush was
constructed outside the perimeter. Despite its careful construction, however,
Fort Crealock suffered from the light, sandy soil, which crumbled easily, blew
away in high wind, or washed away in the rain.
The shape of Fort Chelmsford is not discernible in contemporary
illustrations, but it was probably broadly similar, but without such a
sophisticated bastion. Here the soil was a heavy red clay, and stone was
obtained from a cutting nearby, with the result that Fort Chelmsford
apparently boasted a fully revetted rampart with a banquette of stone and an
underground magaZine screened by an improVised thatch roof. Two distinctive
features of the site were a covered gallery, to protect supplies, made from a
framework of saplings covered with grass mats, and a cutting which ran down
to the nearby yezane River. Whether this was to provide a sheltered access for
watering parties or for drainage - Fort Chelmsford was notoriously wet, due to
the clay - or both remains unclear. At Fort Napoleon, a wooden bridge was
constructed across the Mlalazi River, while the earthwork itself was largely
square in design.
The 2nd Division and Flying Column; forts
Whitehead, Newdigate, Marshall, Evelyn
and Nolela
The designated point of assembly for the new 2nd Division was Landman's
Drift on the Mzinyathi River, some 15 miles north of Rorke's Drift, and
throughout April a large quantity of supplies was accumulated there to feed the
troops. In May a work was built to protect them, which in many way
established a pattern for later posts built along the line of march all the way to
54
Fort Newdigate
Fort Newdigate, constructed during the Second Invasion.
consists of two redoubts some 50 yards apart. Both are 20
yards square. and feature an internal dry stone wall
protected by a 6ft-deep. 6ft-wide ditch. The redoubt on the
left has a small, square redoubt in one corner. The arrival of
a wagon convoy is transforming these redoubts into a
much larger defensive structure. The wagons are parked to
form a diamond-shaped fortification. and the first 'walls'
have been completed. nearest to the viewer. The wagons
are parked en echelon, according to positions marked out
with white flags. with their cattle-traces extended in front
of them to form abattis. The oxen have been turned out
to grale. watched over by sentries. Once in position. the
stores within each wagon are unloaded, and the boxes and
sacks are being taken to build a covered walkway between
the two forts. This 6ft-high passage will be covered over
with tarpaulins. and features a square room in the centre.
The interior of Fort Chelmsford
after its abandonment at the end
of the war; note the sheds built
to protect the stores.
A view of Fort Napoleon, the
Ist Division's POSt on the Mlalazi
River. Note the bridge ,n the
foreground constructed by the
troops on an 'A-frame' of wooden
supports, with sides screened
by brushwood. (Killie Campbell
56 Collections, Durban)
oNdini. It consisted of two redoubts, built in this case several hundred yards
apart, which served to protect either end of the camp area. The engineering was
no more complex than elsewhere in Zululand; both consisted simply of
outlying trenches and inner ramparts, and while one redoubt was merely
oblong in profile, the other was shaped like a diamond, with projecting
bastions at two oppOSite corners.
From Landman's Drift the column moved forward to the border, the Ncome
(Blood) River, and finally crossed into Zulu territory on 1 June. At the same
time, Wood's Flying Column advanced from Khambula, and the two met in the
valley of the Tshotshozi on 2 June. Both columns then moved slowly south
towards Babanango mountain, then turned east along the high ground towards
Mthonjaneni before finally descending into the valley of the White Mfolozi at
the end of June. By this time, it was clear that the Zulu lacked the capacity to
mount more than one further determined act of resistance, and indeed King
Cetshwayo had decided to assemble his army at 0 dini and to wait for the
British to arrive. Nonetheless, the advance was carried out in the face of
constant skirmishing from small parties of Zulu who had been left to guard
huts and crops. Moreover, the heavy baggage train necessary to support the
columns in the field restricted the speed of the British advance, and tied up
large numbers of troops guarding the lines of communication.
At each stage of the advance, forts were built to protect the passing wagon
convoys. At Koppie Aileen, on the come, men of the 58th Regiment built Fort
Whitehead at the end of May. Like the fort at Landman's Drift, it consisted of
two earthwork redoubts. On 6 June Fort ewdigate was built overlooking the
ondweni R i ~ e r ; on 18 June Fort Marshall, not far from Siphezi mountain, was
built; on 22 June Fort Evelyn was constructed; and finally, on 2 July, on the very
eve of victory, Fort Nolela, on the banks of the White Mfolozi was completed.
In each case, these forts were far too small to contain the numbers of troops
in the columns, but they were intended as strongpoints, and the camps were
placed around them. Once the columns advanced, the forts were left with a
small garrison - usually one or two companies of infantry - to guard the supply
convoys that passed regularly back and forth.
o two of these forts were exactly the same, though they followed similar
principles, adapted in each ca e to the lie of the land and conditioned by the
time available. Fort ewdigate followed the established pattern of building two
small redoubts, in this case about SO yards apart. Both seem to have been small
square works, each face only about 10 yards long, and consisting of an outer
ditch with a rampart of stones inside. Adescription of Fort Newdigate suggests
how the system of linked redoubts was intended to work; when convoys of
supplies reached the post, the wagons were parked en echelon on either side, to
provide the sides of a square, with the two redoubts forming the anchors at
either end. Indeed, at Fort Newdigate the commander added an inventive
touch, and as the sacks and boxes of supplies were unpacked they were piled
up to form a screened walkway, which extended diagonally across the post
between the redoubts. In the very centre of the complex, these supplies were
stacked to form a square magazine.
An incident which occurred at Fort ewdigate on the night of 6/7 June
confirmed both the importance of such fortifications and the nervousness
which prevailed among the British troops, particularly those fresh out from the
UK. An outlying picquet thought they saw movements in the dark, and fired a
warning shot, at which point the whole camp rushed to man the alarm
positions. The infantry on one side opened fire, and soon fire was general all
round the laager, with one artillery battery firing several rounds of canister into
the night. Lieutenant Chard - of Rorke's Drift fame - had been on picquet duty
with a detachment of Engineers, and had not managed to enter the camp
before the firing began, and had to throw themselves down in one of the
outlying ditche. ome detachments fired wildly, sending volleys through the
tents of the wagons lining the perimeter. The Engineers lay there throughout,
with the bullets whistling over their heads. When at last order was restored and
the firing ceased, it was found to have been a false alarm. Fort ewdigate was
promptly christened 'Fort Funk'.
Fort Marshall was a rather more complex-shaped earthwork, rather like an
angular 'figure of 8', with a traverse across the centre, and a projecting bastion
at the southernmost angle. Fort Evelyn was an irregular oblong built on the
edge of a steep escarpment, while Fort olela was the simplest of them all - a
simple redoubt of stones piled shoulder high, broadly oblong in shape, with
one corner pushed back at an angle. It was built on a rocky knoll 50 as to
command two wagon laagers - one each for the 2nd Division and Flying
Column - which were built below it down to the river bank.
An unidentified fort of the 2nd
Division photographed on the eve
of the second invasion - possibly
at Landman's Drift. Note the
redoubt in the centre of the camp,
typical of the small forts that were
built at practically every stage
of the advance this late in the war.
S7
N
20 miles
25!<m
INDIAN
OCEAN
o
I
e FOr1 Alber1 (bullt llOSIU1undi
lor pacifiClltion purposes)
e 51 Paul's redoubt
(built postU1undi for
paciflcalion PUrposesl
A Eshowe Aeliel E,pedition (MarchIAprlI1879)
B 1st Divis;on (May-July 18791
C 2nd DIVision (June 18791
o FlYing Column (formerly WOOd's Column, May/June 18791
E Combined 2nd oovislon and FlVlng COlumn (June-July 1879)
British military forts built in Zululand and Natal,
January 24-September 1879,
Thring's Post. e
Thrtng's Post. e
Euphortlia H'II e
redoubt
For1 Cross
For1llddle
Greytown.
%""
#/O/-
0.,>,
Fort Newdlgale
Fort Melville ~ \ .
For1Bromheade ~ 1
Rorke's Drift.;;r::; ...Fort Marshall
Isandlwana
NATAL
Fort Bengough
Helpmekaar..
Helpmekaar 10r1
TRAl\JS AAL
Pielermarilzburg
~
~
<3-
FOr1Whi
Landman's Drift
FortJones"
landman's
Dundee Drift
Eslcourt
\
" .
-- Wakkerstroom
Newcaslle

Ladysmith
-._._--.
58
The final battle
The final battIe of the war took place on the plain close to oNdini (known to
the British as Ulundi) on 4 July. Leaving his baggage wagons at Fort olela
under guard, helmsford crossed the White Mfolozi with over 5,000 men,
including six artillery batteries and a regular cavalry regiment. He formed up in
a square, four deep on each side, and manoeuvred onto a grassy rise a mile and
a half from 0 dini itself. The men from the Flying Column - veterans of
Khambula, who made up two sides of the square - began to construct an
entrenchment, but Chelmsford ordered them to stop. The habit of building
forts at each temporary halt had led to criticism of Chelmsford being over-
cautious where he had once been seen as too confident, while the Zulu still
clung to the belief that the British could be defeated if only they fought in the
open. To silence his critics and destroy any vestige of Zulu hopes, Chelmsford
was determined that the only walls around his position would be a wall of
troops. The cavalry, auxiliaries and ammunition carts were secured safely in the
centre of the square.
The Zulu who had concentrated around 0 dini in anticipation of his
advance moved to surround the square, and began to attack at about 8.30 am.
For 45 minutes they tried to find weak spots in the devastating wall of British
fue, advancing in one place as close as ten yards from the lines before being
driven back. Chelmsford's judgement had proved correct, however; so
overwhelming was his firepower that the Zulu were just as incapable of forcing
an entry through the lines as they had been at Rorke's Drift, Khambula or
Gingindlovu. As their attacks faltered, Chelmsford ordered his cavalry out from
the protection of the square, and a charge by the 17th Lancers drove the Zulus
from the field. Over 1,500 Zulu were killed; Chelmsford lost just three officers
and 10 men dead, and 69 wounded. Once the battle was over, Chelmsford's
cavalry rode round the plain, setting fire to the royal homesteads, including
o dini itself.
The British remembered the battle by the name Ulundi. Ironically, given
Chelmsford's determination not to employ entrenchments, the Zulu knew it for
generations as Ocwecweni - 'the battle of the sheet-iron fort'. The sun glinting
on the impressive rows of bayonets around the square had given the impression,
from a distance, that it was protected by a screen of corrugated iron.
Pacification
The battle of Ulundi effectively broke up the Zulu army, and Lord Chelmsford
promptly withdrew back across the White Mfolozi, and up onto the
Mthonjaneni heights. But if the war was won, it was not quite over, for King
Cetshwayo himself had not been captured, and some of his most loyal
supporters refused to accept defeat until his fate was resolved. As a result, a
number of forts were built in the closing weeks of the war, to protect the
withdrawing columns, to serve as bases for parties sent out to hunt for the king,
or intimidate chiefs who refused to surrender.
59
60
Visiting the forts today
The fortunes of the forts built by the British during the war of 1879 have been
decidedly mixed. All of them were constructed as temporary work, intended
to last for the duration of the campaign at best, and not to house a long-term
army of occupation. Although one or two sites were later revived during
Zululand's subsequent troubled history, most had been abandoned by
September 1879, and left to the mercy of the elements. The degree to which
they have survived has largely depended on the use to which the land was put
follOWing the opening of Zululand to white settlement a the end of the 19th
century. Inland, white farmers found the land best suited to cattle ranching,
and apart from the occasional appropriation of surviving stone walls to make
cattle pens, this often had little impact on any surViving remains. In the coastal
sector, however, both climate and soil were more suited to the intensive
cultivation of sugarcane, a crop which requires frequent heavy ploughing, to
the detriment of all but the most robust entrenchments.
For a century, however, many of the inland forts survived in a good state of
preservation, although ironically some are now fast disappearing even as
interest in their history grows. The proliferation of roads built to serve the rural
African community since the 1990s has endangered some, while the increase
in visitors, which has come with improved tourist facilities, has affected others.
Anyone hoping to visit the site should go armed with a copy of either The Field
uide To The War In Zululand and the Defence ofNatal 1879, by John Uiband and
Paul Thompson (University of atal Press, first published in 1979, and in
revised form in 1983 and 1987), or the rather more glossy hardback equivalent,
The Illustrated Guide to the Anglo-Zulu War (U P, 2000), which exhaustively
maps the sites. Visitors should, however, be aware that while public access to
some sites is good, others are on private farmland, and the advice of a local
gUide is always adVised, if only to prevent getting lost!
Of the forts featured most heavily in this book, Fort Pearson, at the Thukela
mouth, is in a good state of preservation, with the trenches still visible and
regularly cleared of bush. The grave of Captain Warren Wynne, who had such
an impact on the engineering of the war, lies in a small cemetery in the
Euphorbia Hill Redoubt nearby. A modern bridge now spans the river where
Pearson once crossed, and Wynne's work at Fort Tenedos can only be reached
along farm roads. While the trenches along part of the site remain, the
remainder has been destroyed by ploughing. The site of the fort at Eshowe -
now known as Fort KwaMondi, after the Zulu name for the Norwegian
missionary, Ommund Oftebro - lies on the outskirts of the modern town. The
site is in relatively good repair, with most of the perimeter ramparts and
trenches still remaining, although the ramparts in one area have been
destroyed by encroaching settlement, and the local heritage bodies struggle to
keep the site free of bush. In 2000 a team from the University of Glasgow's
archaeology department excavated the site. They found the foundations of the
original church and some of the outbUildings - but also discovered that the
interior of the fort had been used at a much later date as a cemetery by the local
African population.
Of the 1st Division's principal depots, considerable traces of Fort Crealock
have survived, but nothing whatsoever remains of Fort Chelmsford beyond a
memorial beside the road to the troops who died there of disease.
Of the Centre Column's base at Helpmekaar, little remains but a faint trace
in the ground, visible only when the grass is burnt in Winter, and a small
military cemetery, which lies behind the modern police station. At Rorke's
Drift, nothing is left of the original mission or of Fort Bromhead, although the
building built when the missionaries returned to the spot in the 1880s now
serves as a church and a battleneld museum. Rorke's old road across the river
fell into disuse with the advent of motor transport, and for half a century it was
possible only to follow Chelmsford's route on horseback or on foot. In the last
decade, however, a new road has been built with a concrete bridge spanning
the Drift; the trenches of Fort Melvill can be explored on the rise immediately
above the crossing on the old Natal side.
The base of Wood' northern column at Khambula is in good repair, apart
from a wattle grove that straddles part of the main laager site. The ramparts of
the redoubt have long since crumbled, but their traces can still easily be
recognised. Most of the site is still open grassland, and Khambula remains one
of the easiest battlenelds of the war to interpret.
Many traces of the old 2nd Division and Flying Column forts still remain,
particularly forts ewdigate, Marshall and Evelyn, although it is often
necessary to hunt for them in the long grass. Many visitors today are surprised
at how small they seem, and how flimsy, now that all that remains of them are
a few shallow trenches and scattered stones which do little to convey the bustle
of camp life that surrounded them when they were in use. Fort Nolela has
benefited from work to pile up fallen stones and restore the walls to their
original height.
The interior of 'Fort Mistake', a
small redoubt built in 1881 - see
the caption overleaf for a detailed
description. 61
62
RIGHT AND PREVIOUS PAGE 'FOrt
Mistake', a small redoubt built in
1881 - after the Transvaal Rebellion
- to command the road between
Dundee and Newcastle.Although
built after the Anglo-Zulu War. the
fort is a fine example of what could
be achieved using dry-stone building
techniques. and incorporated many
features which were to be found in
the stone bastions and civilian
laagers of the Zulu campaign,
including a narrow and carefully
screened doorway and rows of
loopholes and firing steps. The site
is popularly known as 'Fort Mistake'
because of the supposed difficulty
of holding it for a protracted period
without access to water. However,
like many Zululand forts it was
probably only ever intended to
serve as a temporary bastion
during an attack,
Select bibliography
There is an extensive body of literature on the Anglo-
Zulu War, although much of it is inevitably
preoccupied with the warring sides and the main
battles, and neglects the role of fortifications. The
following is a select list of books that include material
on military engineering during the war.
Alan Baynham Jones and Lee Stevenson, Rorke's Drift;
By Those Who Were There (Chichester, 2003)
Ian Castle and Ian Knight, Fearful Hard Times: The
Siege and ReliefofEshowe 1879 (London, 1994)
Robin Drooglever, The Road to [sandlwana: Col.
Anthony Dumford in Natal and Zululand (London,
1992)
Ian Knight, The National Army Museum Book oftl1e
Zulu War (London, 2003)
Ian Knight, Nothing Remains But To Fight: The Defence
of Rorke's Drift (London 1993)
Glossary
Banquette A raised step on the inside of a rampart, from
which the defenders can fire on the enemy.
Bastion A stronghold that when linked together with other
bastions forms an enclosure around a defended place.
Breach An opening made in the wall or rampart of a
fortified place.
Caponier A covered passage across a ditch.
Chevauxde(rise Large pieces of wood full of spikes,
sword blades or long nails. These could be used to block
up breaches and to prevent access to enemy troops.
Cordon A course of stones where the parapet meets the
rampart.
Counterscarp The sloping edge of a ditch nearest to the
besiegers.
Cunette A trench along the middle of a ditch, serving as an
obstacle or a drain.
Curtain A wall that joins together two bastions.
Ditch A hollow channel made beyond the rampart, which
extends all the way around the fortifcation. The edges of
the ditch are made to slope, with the slope nearest the
fortification called the scarp and the slope nearest the
besiegers called the counterscarp.
Embrasure An opening made in a fortification through
which guns or rifles are fired.
Fascine An object made of bundles of branches like faggots,
some 6ft long and tied in two places. Used to strengthen
or replace walls of trenches or other places.
Faussebraie An artificial mound or wall erected in front of
the main rampart.
Ian Knight and Ian Castle, The Zulu War: Then and
Now (London, 1993)
John Laband and Paul Thompson, Kingdom and
Colony at War (Pietermaritzburg, 1990)
John Laband and Paul Thompson, Field Guide to the
War in Zululand and the Defence of Natal 1879
(Pietermaritzbrg, 1979, 1983, 1987)
John Laband and Paul Thompson, Tile Illustrated
Guide to the Anglo-Zulu War (Pietermaritzburg,
2000)
John Laband and Paul Thompson, War Comes to
Umvoti (Durban, 1980)
John Laband and Paul Thompson, The BuffalO Border
(Durban, 1983)
Howard Whitehouse, A WidOW-Making War: The
Letters and Diaries of Major Warren Wynne RE
(Nuneaton, 1995)
Gabion A kind of basket c.3ft high and usually of the same
diameter, filled with earth.
Glacis The sloping ground immediately before the ditch, over
which attacking forces would pass before descending into it.
Lunette A work placed on both sides of a ravelin to defend
it; or, simply, a small fort.
Palisades Strong wooden stakes c.9ft long, driven into the
ground, and usually covered, and situated about a yard
from the parapet of the glacis.
Parallel A deep trench in which the troops working on the
approaches to a fortified place can be supported.
Parapet A bank of earth raised upon the outer edge of a
rampart. Used to protect the besieged and to give cover
to the defenders to enable them to fire down into the
ditch.
Rampart A masonry wall or a great bank of earth around a
fortified place.
Ravelin A work placed in front of a curtain wall and used to
cover the flanks of a bastion.
Retrenchment A fortification consisting of a trench and a
parapet; usually, an inner line of defence within a large
work.
Saps Trenches made under cover of gabions, fascines. etc.
and pushed forward from the main parallel to establish
batteries and other parallels.
Scarp The sloping edge of a ditch nearest to the
fortification.
Talus The sloping side of a wall or earthwork.
Terreplein A sloping bank of earth behind a parapet.
63
Index
tents 28, 28, 34, 36,41, 43,44,48,49, 50,
53,57
temporary march laagers 54
traditional laagers 13
trenches 5, 14, 16, 16, 17, 17,24,26,26,27,
31,32,40,41,42,45,46,48,53,54.56.
60,61
trous-de-Ioups 18, 19, 19,21
Ulundi (oNdini), battle of 5, 6, 56, 59
Utrecht, fort at 47,48
ramparts 8, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19,20,25,26,27,
28,31,32,33,36.37,38,40,42,42,48,
54,56,60
redoubts 17, 17, 18, 19,34,35,40,47-8,
48,49,50,51,51,54,55,56,57
rocket troughs and rockets f 7, 28
Rorke's Drift (improvised fort) 5, 27. 34,
35,35,36-7, 36, 38,38,39,40,41, 42.
43-4,52,54,61
Rorke's Drift, battle of 35,37-8,40,45,59
Royal Engineers: forts
design and construction 13, 16, 17, 19,
20,26,33,36,42,43,45,57
Pearson, Col. C.K. 5,6,8,9, 10, 16, 19,20,
21,24-33,47,48,52-4,60
Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande 27,38
vedettes 24,28,29
Zulu army
deployment under fire 27, 32
inability to breach defences 59
musketeers 36, 38, 40, 49
over-confidence of 49
tactics ('horns') 48,49,51
weakening and break-up 56, 59
Zulu kingdomlZululand
British ultimatum to 16
civilian 'Iaagers' in (1879) I I
fom in (1879) 58
royal homesteads 5, 6, 3I, 52, 59
white settlement of 60
5appers 10, 19,24,36
settler communities 4,8, 12-13
sheds 25,41, 41, 43, 48,53,56
square laagers 31, 32, 32
stakes 18, 19,20,21,25,26,29,30
supply depots 8, 14, 15,21,24,34, 47, 48,
52-3,52,53,56
wagons, use in defences f 3, 25, 26, 31, 32.
32,34,36,38,39,41,41,42,47,48,49,
50,50,54,55,57
wire entanglements 5, 14, 18, 19, 19,21,28
WolfTrap Fort 10
Wood, Col. H.E. 5,6, 34, 48,49,5 I
Wynne RE, Maj.Warren R.C. 9, 10, 17, 19,
20,24,27,28,29,30,32-3,47,60
Natal 4, 6, 8, 10-1 I , 53
civilian laagers 4, I I, 12
defensive posts 10, 12-13, 58
tensions with Zululand 12
Zulu army crosses into 35
Northern Column 47-9,51,61
Martini-Henry rifle 15, 38, 49
mealie bagslsacks 35,35,36,37,38,39,40,
42,45,48
military engineering, origins 8-9
Khambula, battle of 48,49,51,5/,52
King Cetshwayo kaMpande 5,6, 16,27,48,
49,56,59
King Sekhukhune of the Pedi 47
Helpmekaar (camp/fort) 36.40,40.41,41,
42-3,42,44-5,60-1
Isandlwana, battle of 13,34,36,40,44,45,
47
British losses 5,24-5,27,35,36,42
lack of fortification 34
survivors of 36,37,40-1
Zulu attacks 34-5, 48
'Fort Mistake' 61, 62
Fort Napoleon 53,54,56
Fort Newdigate ('Fort Funk') 54,55,56-7,
61
Fort Nolela 57,59,61
Fort Pearson 8,16-17, 16, 17, 18, 19,20,
21, 30, 52, 60
Fort Pine 6, 13
Fort Richards 53
Fort Tenedos 9, 18, 19-21, r9, 20, 25, 30,
31,52,60
Fort Thinta 34,47
Fort Whitehead 56
Fort Williamson I 2, 16
Frere, Sir Henry Bartle 4-5,8, 16
gabions 17, 21
Gatling guns 17, 17,25, 28, 32
Gingindlovu
battle of 32, 33, 52, 59
defensive features 31-2,33,48
glacis 14, 16. I 7
Greytown 5,12,14
gun pladormslpositions 20, 23, 25, 26,42
laagers 31,32,48,48,49,50,51,51
Landman's Drift (fort) 54,56,57
Left Flank Column 47,48-9,52
loopholes 12, 13,25,26,26,28,37,40,42,
43,44,62
Jones RE, Capt. Walter 10,42
abattis 46,48,54,55
ammunition boxes/carts 45, 49, 59
auxiliary units 5, 6, 10, 10, I I, 13, 24, 25,
31, 32, 36, 37,40,41, 42, 43, 44, 48
Figures in bold refer to illustrations
banquettes 20,25,37,45,54
bastions 8, 13, 20, 26, 37, 40, 42, 44, 54,
57
biscuit-box barricades 35, 35, 36, 37, 38,
39,40
'blindages' 26,42
Camp Khambula 47-8, 48, 49, 50, 51, 51,
56,61
'caponiers' 26,26
cattle kraals/laagers 23,27,35,37,38,39,
40,44,48,48,49,51,51
Centre Column 24-5, 34-8, 39,40-6,47,
52,60-1
Chard RE,Lt.John 10,19,36,37,38,40,43,
44,57
Chelmsford, Lt. Gen. Lord 5, 6, 10, 14, 21,
25,31-2,34,35,42,43,44,45,48,52,59
Chief Sihayo kaXongo 34
civilian laagers 4,5,12-14,12,47,47
Coastal Column 9, 10, 16, 19, 20, 21,
24-33,28,29,48
defensive laagers 50
disease, outbreaks of 32-3,54
ditches 12, 17, 18, 19,20,21,25,26,27,33,
46,48,57
drainage 26, 28, 53, 54
drawbridges 23,25
Durnford RE, Col. Anthony 10, 13, 19
earthworks 10, 12, 16-17, 16, 17, 19,36,
47,47,54,56
Eshowe fort (Fort KwaMondi) 6,8,9, 15,
21, 24, 24, 25--6, 26, 27, 27, 28-31, 28,
32-3,33,60
siege of 5,27-8,28, 30, 32,48,51
Eshowe mission station 5, ~ 1,22-3,24-7,
24,28,30,35,35
Eshowe Relief Column 31-2,32,52
field guns 17, 17,23,43,48,49
Flying Column 56,57,59,61
Fort Argyll 53
Fort Benough 43,44
Fort Bromhead 36, 37,43-5,61
Fort Buckingham 12
Fort Chelmsford 53, 54, 56, 60
Fort Crealock 52,53,54,60
'Fort Durnford' 13
Fort Evelyn 57, 61
Fort Jones 15
Fort Marshall 57, 61
Fort Melvill ('Revenge') 44, 45--6, 45, 46, palisades 48,50
61 parapets 18, 19,25,31 64
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Design, technology and histor'y of key fortresses.
strategic positions and defensive systems
l -1 I ' i t i s l .)
I .- ( ) 1- 1' i f i (.- t't t i () ') l'n s i 11
Z t.l l tl l ;-1 n d I ?'; 7 9
On 1 1 January 1879, the British
Em pire went to war with
the independent kingdom of
Zululand. The British anticipated
a swift and decisive victory,
placing great faith in m odern
firepower; no plans were made
for providing defensive positions
from which to occupy Zulu
territory. However, the losses
suffered at lsandlwana and
Rorke's Drift quickly altered the
British approach; throughout
the rest of the war, the British
fortified alm ost every position
they occupied in Zululand, from
perm anent colum n depots
tta tem porary halts. 'I'his book
explores British defensive
techniqtles, contemporary
cngineering theory, and key sites
such as Eshowe M ission Station,
forts I'earson and Tenedos,
and Rorke's Drift.
Photographs
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I IIustcatioos Unrivalled detail
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